8th Annual University of Auckland Mass Spectrometry Symposium Report

​This year’s University of Auckland Mass Spectrometry Symposium was held on December 6^th in the new ‘building 201’ on the city campus. It featured 16 scientific presentations, including 2 keynote addresses, and a lightning talk session which was new for this year. Over one hundred registrants attended, predominantly from across the University, but including other tertiary institutions and CRIs. This made the 8^th instalment of our annual symposium the biggest yet.

In the opening address, Associate Professor Thao Le (AUT) entertained us by presenting her journey in proteomics, focussing on its use in food quality assessment, and touched on its use in determination of snake identification using venom samples. Our afternoon session was opened by keynote speaker Dr Brad Clarke, an analytical chemist and environmental scientist at the University of Melbourne. Brad gave a fascinating talk about the power of mass spectrometry to measure pollutants such as PFAS and the extent to which they have permeated through our environment.

Other scientific highlights of the day included presentations from AgResearch on how they are using a timsToF platform in their proteomics and metabolomics studies, imaging of brain glycans and neuropeptides, and the development of data analysis software to enable interpretation of complex mass spectrometry data. University of Auckland capabilities and platforms also featured prominently, via updates from our technical staff teams, and from our research staff who utilise mass spectrometry in extracellular vesicle analysis, wine science, identifying novel peptide sequences that could lead to the development of new anti-cancer drugs, and the emerging application of proteomics in forensic science.

Our lightning talk session, featuring a mix of post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers, was a huge success, and we congratulate Sukhpreet Gill with her talk entitled “Ageing Effect on the Concentration of Volatile Sulfur Compounds and Various other Aroma Compounds in Pinot Noir Wines” as runner-up and Harsha Negi with her talk titled “Fast-Tracking Peptide Ligand Discovery: Leveraging Affinity Selection Mass Spectrometry for E3 Ligase COP1” as the winner for their excellent 3 min presentations. We also thank the FoS ShaRE platform for sponsoring the raffle, which was won by Dr Jen Muhl. 

A big thank you to the organising committee (Joel Rindelaub, Lisa Pilkington, Rebecca Jelley, Matthew Sullivan, Githal Arachchige, Stuart Morrow) for all of their mahi putting together an excellent speaker and networking program. And finally, to the University’s Platform Use and Development Fund, and the FoS ShaRE Mass Spec platform for their strong support of the day.