Divide-and-Conquer Matrisome Protein (DC-MaP) Strategy: An MS-Friendly Approach to Proteomic Matrisome Characterization

Currently, the extracellular matrix (ECM) is considered a pivotal complex meshwork of macromolecules playing a plethora of biomolecular functions in health and disease beyond its commonly known mechanical role. Only by unraveling its composition can we leverage related tissue engineering and pharmacological efforts. Nevertheless, its unbiased proteomic identification still encounters some limitations mainly due to partial ECM enrichment by precipitation, sequential fractionation using unfriendly-mass spectrometry (MS) detergents, and resuspension with harsh reagents that need to be entirely removed prior to analysis. These methods can be technically challenging and labor-intensive, which affects the reproducibility of ECM identification and induces protein loss. Here, we present a simple new method applicable to tissue fragments of 10 mg and more. The technique has been validated on human ovarian tissue and involves a standardized procedure for sample processing with an MS-compatible detergent and combined centrifugation. This two-step protocol eliminates the need for laborious sample clarification and divides our samples into 2 fractions, soluble and insoluble, successively enriched with matrisome-associated (ECM-interacting) and core matrisome (structural ECM) proteins.     

3D Hair sketching for real-time dynamic & key frame animations

Physically based simulation of human hair is a well studied and well known problem. But the “pure” physically based representation of hair (and other animation elements) is not the only concern of the animators, who want to “control” the creation and animation phases of the content. This paper describes a sketch-based tool, with which a user can both create hair models with different styling parameters and produce animations of these created hair models using physically and key frame-based techniques. The model creation and animation production tasks are all performed with direct manipulation techniques in real-time.