Chemistry Graduate Program

Faculty Advisor: Lloyd Smity

Resume

Robert Millikin’s research is focused on improvement of top-down proteomics search accuracy and sensitivity using MetaMorpheus. Proteoforms, the different forms of proteins produced from the genome in a variety of splice forms and adorned with myriad post-translational modifications, are critical actors in biological systems. These variations play central roles in a wide variety of biological processes, from cell signaling to gene regulation, among others. Robert has developed software for the interpretation of mass spectrometry-based proteomics data. He and collaborators created an open-source platform to identify proteins in bottom-up proteomics data. Peptides containing post-translational modifications (PTMs) are an especially difficult-to-identify class of peptides which MetaMorpheus specializes in identifying.