About the Bush Lab

The Bush Lab is a research group in the Department of Chemistry and the Biological Physics, Structure & Design Program at the University of Washington. Our research focuses on the development and application of mass spectrometry and ion mobility spectrometry techniques to elucidate the structures and assembly of protein complexes and subcellular machines.

  • Interested in joining the Bush Lab? Click here to learn about current opportunities.
  • Our weekly group meetings are held each Wednesday at 10:00 AM.

Recent News

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May Constabel successfully defended her dissertation!

Congratulations to May Constabel, who successfully defended her thesis titled “Programmed Temperature Electrospray Ionization (ptESI) for Thermal Cycling of Proteins”. May will soon complete her degree in the M.S. in Applied Chemical Science and Technology (MSACST) program. May has accepted an offer to join the laboratory of Prof. Anouk Rijs at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam …

Continue reading “May Constabel successfully defended her dissertation!”

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New Publication: Quantitatively Differentiating Antibodies Using Charge-State Manipulation, Collisional Activation, and Ion Mobility – Mass Spectrometry. 

Congratulations to Theresa Gozzo, whose research was just published in Analytical Chemistry! This research demonstrates the synergy between cation-to-anion proton-transfer reactions (CAPTR), energy-dependent IM-MS, and similarity scoring for the analysis of biotherapeutics. Quantitatively Differentiating Antibodies Using Charge-State Manipulation, Collisional Activation, and Ion Mobility – Mass Spectrometry. Theresa A. Gozzo, Matthew F. Bush. Anal. Chem. 2023, , DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c04638. (Link)

Research

Most proteins, particularly those that accomplish complicated tasks, form assemblies with other proteins and molecules that are critical to their function. Established structural biology tools are most effective for highly purified samples that have limited conformational variability, which makes it challenging to apply those methods to capture a systems-wide understanding of the structures, interactions, and dynamics that are present under different cellular conditions. The Bush Lab develops and applies mass spectrometry based techniques that are fast, sensitive, and tolerant of heterogeneity for characterizing the native structures of biological assemblies.