Chris Ashwood
cashwood.proteaglyco.com
Chris Ashwood
@cashwood.proteaglyco.com
Director of Protea Glycosciences
Accelerating glycoscience research
Pinned
Given the influx of people at bsky, thought I would formally introduce myself 👋
I'm Chris, an Australian glycoscientist who has studied the field for >10 years now (across both AU and US), starting (MRes and PhD) in the lab of Prof. Nicki Packer.
I believe LC-MS glyco still has a lot to discover.
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Excited to share our laboratory's research tools to study Siglecs along with some interesting discoveries with these tools. Lot of help from many group, but @zeinab-jc.bsky.social was the major driver of this work. Please reach out if you would like to try them out. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
An ultrasensitive and modular platform to detect Siglec ligands and control immune cell function
Siglec-liposomes are a multivalent and modular platform for profiling Siglec ligands and modulating immune cell function.
www.science.org
November 12, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Brief observations:
ASMS Meeting: 🍺→ 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👨‍👧‍👧👩‍👩‍👦‍👦, always questions/proposals.
HUPO General Assembly of Members: No 🍺→ 🪑🪑🙍🪑, no questions.
November 12, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Wow what a fun mass spectrometer! Our preprint peaks with an MS4 experiment on oligos in negative mode, combining three different ion isolation modes and three different activation methods: electrons for EDD, collisions, and IRMPD 😅 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
November 11, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Congratulations to Bill Noble on receiving the 2026 Gil Omenn Computational Proteomics Award from US HUPO!
us-hupo.org/Computationa...
US HUPO - Computational Proteomics Award
us-hupo.org
November 12, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Congratulations to Mike MacCoss on receiving the Donald F. Hunt Distinguished Contribution in Proteomics Award from US HUPO!
us-hupo.org/Distinguishe...
US HUPO - Distinguished Contribution Award
us-hupo.org
November 12, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Scientists operate on principles of good faith. But this is just ridiculous. If you, dear reader, take nothing else away from The Drain paper, it is that publishers cannot be invited to the table any longer.

They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.

3/n
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Questionably fun fact: The study of endotoxin in modern age was kicked off by Peter Panum (studying putrid fluids). He had also done work on albumen, releasing “something” with dilute acid hydrolysis. Eichwald in 1865 did that same reaction on mucin, arguably starting the study of glycoproteins.
November 12, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
The Importance of Denaturing Conditions for Protein and Peptide Quantification by Tryptophan Fluorescence pubs.acs.org/doi/10....

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#proteomics #prot-paper
November 11, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
May Institute on Computation & Statistics for MS and Proteomics is taking great shape. Fantastic new and repeat instructors and lots of new content. We are grateful to our sponsors Fragmatics and Biognosys. Keep an eye on the website computationalproteomics.khoury.northeastern.edu
November 10, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
A few weeks ago I attended the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival. I went as someone who is interested in most everything in the world, lives in a wet, fungi filled temperate rainforest, and is mostly ignorant about fungi. Here are some things I learned:
November 11, 2025 at 2:58 AM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
"I have lost count of the number of times over the years that I’ve said “Huh, I didn’t think mass spec could do that”."
Mass spec ID after screening hundreds of thousands of mixed library compounds - without any sort of tagging or labeling? Yikes:
Screening Without Tagging
www.science.org
November 10, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
B4GALT1 and Wntless collaborate to block LRP5/6 translocation from #Golgi to cell surface, say Xinyang Li, Yue Hua, Xiaoqing Gan and colleagues (Fudan University): rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#Biochemistry #Trafficking #CellSignaling #Wnt
November 10, 2025 at 7:45 PM
To use it, it's best to search for the instrument model and work from there.
Here's an example of all Orbitrap Astral (Zoom) tenders with purchase values:

The $1 is likely a placeholder, but MPI may not be.
These can also include LC, service contracts, etc, so approximation at best
November 10, 2025 at 12:21 PM
That’s been the main goal with leaks and posting instrument prices, more informed MS purchases.
The more informed the purchases are, the better value for money these funding bodies (and labs) get.
November 10, 2025 at 7:59 AM
I've just come across a resource for finding MS prices beyond the US (GSA Advantage).
It's called EU Tenders (ted.europa.eu) and has many recent MS prices on there.
E.g. Astral Zoom with FAIMS Pro Duo is listed as $1.75 million Euro ($2 million USD)
Limited info but probably includes an unlisted LC
TED - EU Tenders, the Supplement to the Official Journal - TED - Liferay DXP
Homepage of the official portal of TED, Tenders Electronic Daily. TED contains all active notices published in the Supplement to the EU Official Journal.
ted.europa.eu
November 10, 2025 at 1:05 AM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
This is due to training cut-offs, and because in human review, manuscripts are compared against the reviewers accumulated experience, which is not primarily stored in a textual format that is publicly accessible for the LLM to use. This argues against using centralised LLMs for peer review.
November 8, 2025 at 4:46 AM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
My personal experience, and anecdotes from friends, agreed with these observations.
For the last 3 years, the story of the biotech financing environment has been much the same. Venture funding is slow, IPOs are few and far between. Mergers and acquisitions are beginning to pick up, but they tend to be smaller transactions: cen.acs.org/business/fin... #chemsky 🧪
Biotech markets aren't picking up just yet
Despite some recent eye-catching deals, the financing environment is still sluggish
cen.acs.org
November 7, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Fun day out at Waters charge detection mass spectrometry (CD-MS) technology day.
November 6, 2025 at 7:14 PM
New TMT Tribrid from Thermo for #ASMS2026 (public info)
- IRMPD is the new UPVD
- IRMPD with TMT boosts reporter intensity by up to 240% without affecting quant
- New resolutions -> Down to 1k res, with an associated loss of signal, but at least it looks faster!
- Improved proton transfer reaction
November 6, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
My student's paper on enzymatic remodelling to generate anionic glycan arrays has just been published online in @jbiolchem! Various recombinant glycosyl- or sulphotransferases were employed to prepare glycan motifs tested with various lectins. #glycotime

www.jbc.org/article/S002...
November 5, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
✨ A decade of science, collaboration, and innovation – celebrating 10 years of #BayBioMS at @tum.de School of Life Sciences!

What an incredible day at the 10-Year Anniversary Symposium 🎉
November 5, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
Establishing 18O-Labeled Inositol Phosphates for Quantitative Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry: Fragmentation Pathways and Comparison with 13C-Labeled Analogs #AC pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Establishing 18O-Labeled Inositol Phosphates for Quantitative Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry: Fragmentation Pathways and Comparison with 13C-Labeled Analogs
Capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry (CE-MS) allows for the rapid and accurate quantitative analysis of inositol phosphates (InsPs) and inositol pyrophosphates (PP-InsPs). The recent discovery of new InsPs and PP-InsPs isomers in plants and mammals necessitates new heavy isotope references for quantitative analysis of complex cellular extracts. Here, we evaluate 18O-labeled InsPs and PP-InsPs as alternatives to 13C labeled internal standards for quantitation by CE-MS. In contrast to 13C labels, the 18O labels are introduced at the end of a synthetic campaign and not at the beginning, rendering 18O much more accessible and affordable as a label. A series of 18O-labeled InsPs and PP-InsPs with different numbers and positions of 18O atoms were synthesized, enabling systematic investigation of MS2 fragmentation pathways. We propose two major dissociation pathways to elucidate the 18O redistribution of the dominant product ion (the loss of H3PO4). Based on these insights, we identified the loss of HPO3 as a suitable transition for minimizing isotope redistribution in MS2 analysis. The ratios of this alternative product ion and dominant product ion were reproducible across replicates, concentration, and measurement days, supporting the use of this alternative product ion as a reliable product ion for quantitative analysis. Application to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, HCT116 cells, and Arabidopsis thaliana extracts confirmed accurate quantitation and precision comparable to 13C-based methods.
pubs.acs.org
November 5, 2025 at 6:59 PM
My favourite attendee feedback:
"I loved this class and I am super excited about Skyline, which is totally new to me. Halfway into the class I'm thinking "I've been living under a rock, this is going to change my life!" Without a doubt this class will have the highest ROI of anything I do this year"
Wrapping up the 2025 Skyline Online Small Molecule course! Fantastic instructors and presenters, including Haley from the Baker lab with an insightful ion mobility crash course.

Great discussion and interaction from participants this year—looking forward to next year! #teammassspec
November 5, 2025 at 11:55 AM
Reposted by Chris Ashwood
What a week! So pleased to now also see the peer reviewed version in Science Signaling of @megtriesscience.bsky.social PhD work joint with the Saunders lab, see her great thread for explanation below www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
November 4, 2025 at 8:06 PM