Director, Proteomics Core Facility
Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Education:
Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Virginia, College of Arts & Sciences
B.A., Chemistry, Cornell University, College of Arts & Sciences

Career Highlights:
Mark Platt completed his doctoral training under the guidance of Professor Donald F. Hunt at the University of Virginia, where he focused on the use of mass spectrometry to identify proteins within biological systems, specifically in the areas of proteomics, protein phosphorylation, and differential analysis.

Following his graduate work, Platt accepted a position as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia. There he was responsible for establishing and managing a functioning proteomics laboratory and for applying this technology to the elucidation of protein expression and signaling pathways in plant systems. He was also responsible for establishing several important external research collaborations and for supervising doctoral students.

Research Areas:
Platt has extensive experience in the field of proteomics and his research has involved the use of mass spectrometry to identify proteins within biological systems. Specifically, he has focused on the identification of specific sites of protein post-translational modification (i.e. phosphorylation) and/or the differential analysis of relative protein expression.

In the course of these studies, Platt has acquired expertise in the enrichment and preparation of samples from plants and bacteria, as well as from mammalian tissues and biological fluids. He has also been involved in the use, maintenance, and modification of several instruments, including commercially available quadrupole ion traps, MALDI-TOF, and Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometers. In addition, he has created a number of software applications to automate and streamline many aspects of the data analysis for these projects.

Selected Publications:
Rebecca W. Corbin, Oleg Paliy, Feng Yang, Jeffrey Shabanowitz, Mark D. Platt, Charles E. Lyons, Jr., Karen Root, Jon McAuliffe, Michael I. Jordan, Sydney Kustu, Eric Soupene, and Donald F. Hunt; “Toward a protein profile of Escherichia coli: Comparison to its transcription profile” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2003; 100: 9232-9237.

Daniel J. Hassett, Patrick A. Limbach, Robert F. Hennigan, Karl E. Klose, Robert E. W. Hancock, Mark D. Platt, and Donald F. Hunt; “Bacterial biofilms of importance to medicine and bioterrorism: proteomic techniques to identify novel vaccine components and drug targets” Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy, 2003; 3(8): 1201-1207.

Benjamin A. Garcia, Mark D. Platt, Timothy L. Born, Jeffrey Shabanowitz, Norman A. Marcus, and Donald F. Hunt; “Protein Profile of Osteoarthritic Human Articular Cartilage Using Tandem Mass Spectrometry” Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 2006; 20(20): 2999-3006.

C. Huie Lin, Mark D. Platt, Scott B. Ficarro, Mark H. Hoofnagle, Jeffrey Shabanowitz, Donald F. Hunt, Lucio Comai, and Gary K. Owens; “Mass Spectrometric Identification of Phosphorylation Sites of the rRNA Transcription Factor Upstream Binding Factor (UBF)” American Journal of Physiology Cell Physiology, 2006; EPub Dec 20.

Mark D. Platt, Sung-Hei Hwang, Michael J. Schurr, Jill Schurr, Roger C. Levesque, Ahmet C. Karubulut, Sang Sun Yoon, Patrick A. Limbach, John J. Rowe, Gee W.Lau, Donald F. Hunt and Daniel J. Hassett; “Proteogenomic Analysis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Grown During Anaerobic Nitrate and Nitrite Respiration” In preparation.

Mark D. Platt, Olga Chertihin, Jeffrey Shabanowitz, John C. Herr, Donald F. Hunt, and Pablo E. Visconti; “Differential phosphoproteomic analysis of capacitated sperm” In preparation.

Contact Information:
Mark D. Platt
(518) 276-3273
plattm@rpi.edu