Group Project Individual Blog Post

By Heidi Bachtel

For my groups experiment we will be comparing the proteins of three different tissues in a chicken and a turkey. Our question that prompted this experiment was; are the tissues/organs between species going to be more similar to each other since they perform the same function, or are the proteins within a single organism going to be more similar? For example, is a turkey heart going to be more similar to a chicken heart then the rest of the other tissues and organs of the turkey.

The main function of the heart (cardiac muscle) is to pump blood throughout an organisms body, and to maintain an adequate blood pressure at the same time. The main function of skeletal muscles is to contract to allow an organism to move about it’s environment. These two different types of muscle are very different in their function, and where they are found in the body. Organisms only have one heart, which beats involuntarily while skeletal muscle are voluntary, and are found throughout the body. After researching the protein profiles of these different tissues, it was found that they both of course have differences but also similarities. The heart has 28 proteins (1) that are unique to itself while skeletal muscles have 93 proteins (2) that are unique to the itself. Interestingly, the cardiac tissue and skeletal tissue share 58 common proteins (1)(2) which is the most between any other organ/tissue in the body. From these results, I would speculate that the organs between species would be more similar then the proteins throughout one specific organism.

Works Cited

(1)"The Heart-specific Proteome." The Human Protein Atlas. The Human Protein Atlas Project, n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2017.

(2)"The Skeletal Muscle-specific Proteome." The Human Protein Atlas. The Human Protein Atlas Project, n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2017.