Patent ID: 6611766
Filing Date: 2003-08-26
Classification: A01K,C07K,C12N,G06K,G06T

Abstract:
A computer-implemented method for identifying or characterizing qualitative or quantitative changes in affected proteins and for distinguishing unaffected cells and proteins expressed by unaffected cells from affected cells and proteins expressed by said affected cells wherein said unaffected and/or affected cells have either been treated or immunologically or pathologically affected, in vitro or in vivo, and wherein said unaffected and/or affected cells are derived from a sample of a specific cell type, cell line, tissue or physiological sample, said sample subjected to two dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DGE) to provide a 2DGE gel comprising unaffected and/or affected proteins, said method comprising(1) capturing a new image of said electrophoresis gel containing at least one protein, wherein said new image contains an undetermined position and integrated optical density percentage (IOD%) corresponding to each said protein; (2) generating a master composite image which is used to analyze the new image, wherein the master composite image contains a plurality of master composite spots, each master composite spot being defined by at least an IOD% and a position; (3) generating a master composite spot data list, wherein the master composite spot data list comprises at least a position, an IOD%, a unique spot identifier, and the variability of the spot for the position and IOD%, for each of the plurality of master composite spots; (4) aligning the new image with the master composite image; (5) determining the position and IOD% of new image spots corresponding to proteins using the spot data information from the master composite image to guide the search for and identification of new image spots that have a position that is within a position tolerance of the position of the corresponding master composite spots and that have an IOD% that is within an IOD% tolerance of the IOD% of corresponding master composite spots to form a set of matched new image spots corresponding to unaffected proteins; (6) determining the position and IOD% of new image spots corresponding to proteins using the spot data information from the master composite image to guide the search for and identification of new image spots that have a position that is within a position tolerance of the position of the corresponding master composite spots but that have an IOD% that is outside the IOD% tolerance of the IOD% of corresponding master composite spots, to form a set of matched new image spots corresponding to affected proteins; and (7) searching the image outside of the set of matched new image spots to determine the position and IOD% of unidentified new image spots corresponding to proteins, wherein the spots detected in steps 6 and 7 represent affected proteins.