Better quality controls produce cleaner science

André Matagne conducts research into quality controls on purified proteins at the Center d'Ingénierie des Protéines of the University of Liège. He hopes to use this to improve the reproducibility of research data. During the online Life Science knowledge days Matagne provides text and explanation about this.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

Matagne first explains what exactly recombinant proteins are: “A so-called recombinant protein is a protein encoded by a gene, called 'recombinant DNA', that is expressed in a host organism that does not naturally possess this gene. For example, the host organism (known as the 'expression system') can be a bacterium, yeast, mammalian cell or plant cell.”

He continues: “The addition of new genes allows this organism to produce large amounts of proteins, so-called ‘heterologous expression’, either for basic research in the academic environment or for industrial applications, such as diagnostic, protein-based pharmaceuticals, antibodies and enzymes for the treatment of diseases. For example, the Escherichia coli bacterium has been engineered to produce insulin.”

Extra strict quality controls are necessary for research into recombinant proteins, says Matagne. “Several publications have emerged over the past decade highlighting the problems of non-reproducibility in both basic and preclinical research across a wide range of disciplines. Attempts have been made to calculate the economic cost dimension related to the non-reproducibility of data, which makes reading uncomfortable for researchers, funding agencies and journals where these data are published. Although openly and widely acknowledged, the problem appears to have been addressed on a field-by-field basis rather than through a community-wide effort.”

A structural problem, according to Matagne: “Therefore, no specific standards for the quality control of protein reagents currently exist and the existing ones are vastly underused. However, these checks are essential from a scientific point of view to identify poor quality or artefactual research. The use of poor quality peptides, proteins and antibodies as experimental reagents affects both the quality and cost of the research conducted with these reagents.”

To solve this problem, Matagne has drawn up a list of recommended information and tests in a working group: “These can help with the validation of protein samples used in biological research. The set of minimal tests we propose is based on simple experimental methods that are widely available. We recommend that this or similar information become mandatory documents in any submission to scientific journals when using protein/peptide reagents.”

During his (English) reading the researcher will delve deeper into this recommended methodology, but Matagne already wants to say this to his audience: “We aim to prove that a small investment in time in the quality control of protein (related) reagents results in negligible additional costs with can provide a significant improvement in the quality and reproducibility of experimental data obtained with these reagents.

Andre Matagne's online presentation will take place on Thursday, April 22 at 10:00 am. You can register for this webinar via this link.