Karolinska Institutet (short KI), Stockholm/ Sweden is one of the world´s leading medical universities. KI accounts for over 40 percent of the medical academic research conducted in Sweden and offers the country’s broadest range of education in medicine and health sciences. Since 1901, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has selected the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine. KI has several campuses in different areas of Stockholm. Campus Solna has 1,709 FTE students, receives 1,634 million SEK for research annually, and employs 1,990 FTE employees. Campus Huddinge and Karolinska University Hospital, Huddinge have 3,074 FTE students, receive 904 million SEK for research and employ 1,081 FTE employees, while Karolinska University Hospital, Solna has 756 FTE students, obtains 1,280 million SEK for research and has 1,149 FTE employees.
The Department of Medical biochemistry and Biophysics (MBB) is one of the largest of KIs 20 departments, with 18 full professors, and is one of the academically most successful (three Nobel prize laureates have worked here). MBB has the oldest mass spectrometry facility in biomedical sciences in Europe and the second oldest in the world, which opened its doors for service in 1947.
Role in Ariadne VIBE
KI will provide for analysis: E. coli bacteria (0.5 μm in width by 2 μm in length) in different phases of growth (exponential & equilibrium); grown in monoisotopic media, with the isotopes 13C, D, 15N and 18O depleted 10, 100, 10 and 5 times, respectively. These bacteria must be ≈1% lighter than the above bacteria grown in normal media; spherical bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans 1-2 µm in size. It is the sturdiest organism known, a candidate for surviving in deep vacuum of space, and thus possible carrier of life to other planets. KI has previously shown that D.R. can self-assemble into a viable cell from components. Thus even if not a single D.R. bacterium will survive the soft landing, a viable bacterium can still be assembled from the debris. KI will also supply small human cells, such as Erythrocyte, red blood cell in shape of a disk with diameter of ≈7 µm, maximum thickness of ≈2 µm and a minimum thickness in the centre of ≈1 µm, as well as human THP-1 monocytes. These are large (≈20 µm in diameter) spherical human cells.
KI will participate in consulting Fasmatech and other consortium members in designing the whole instrument.
KI will participate in developing MS/MS techniques for very large ions, and electron scattering detector for simultaneous measurements of m, z and m/z, with potential for imaging of single massive ions.