Albert J.R. Heck (born 25 November 1964) is a Dutch scientist and professor at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

, the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

in the field of

mass spectrometry Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that is used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. The results are presented as a ''mass spectrum'', a plot of intensity as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. Mass spectrometry is use ...

and

proteomics Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, with many functions such as the formation of structural fibers of muscle tissue, enzymatic digestion of food, or synthesis and replication of DNA. In ...

. He is known for his work on technologies to study proteins in their natural environment, with the aim to understand their biological function. Albert Heck was awarded the

Spinoza Prize The Spinoza Prize ( nl, Spinozapremie) is an annual award of 2.5 million euro, to be spent on new research given by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The award is the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. It is named after the philosopher ...

in 2017, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands.

Biography

Albert Heck was born in

Goes Goes () is a city and municipality in the southwestern Netherlands on Zuid-Beveland, in the province of Zeeland. The city of Goes has approximately 27,000 residents. History Goes was founded in the 10th century on the edge of a creek: de Korte ...

, Netherlands. He studied

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

at the

VU University The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

in Amsterdam, and received his PhD degree from the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

in 1993. After a postdoctoral period at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in the lab of

Richard Zare Richard Neil Zare (born November 19, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio) is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Zare has made a considerable impact in physical ...

and

Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Ba ...

(Livermore) he became a postdoctoral fellow and later lecturer at

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

. In 1998 he accepted a chair at

as head of the Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Group. His group is part of the Departments of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Faculty of Science. From 2006 until 2012 Heck was scientific director of the

Bijvoet Centre for Biomolecular Research The Bijvoet Centre for Biomolecular Research is a research institute at Utrecht University. The Bijvoet Centre performs research on the relation between the structure and function of biomolecules, including proteins and lipids, which play a role ...

, and from 2015 to 2018 scientific director of the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Science at

. In 2017 he received a Distinguished Faculty professorship of Utrecht University.

Research

The research of Albert Heck is focused on the development and use of mass spectrometry to study all cellular proteins. Within his research group, there are three main lines of research, improvement of instrumentation and analytical methods, proteomics and mass spectrometry based

structural biology Structural biology is a field that is many centuries old which, and as defined by the Journal of Structural Biology, deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every le ...

, including

native Native may refer to: People * Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Native Americans (disambiguation) In arts and entert ...

protein mass spectrometry and

cross-link In chemistry and biology a cross-link is a bond or a short sequence of bonds that links one polymer chain to another. These links may take the form of covalent bonds or ionic bonds and the polymers can be either synthetic polymers or natural ...

ing mass spectrometry. Albert Heck is regarded as one of the pioneers of native mass spectrometry. Among the complexes that he studied using native mass spectrometry are intact viruses of up to 18 megadalton,

ribosomes Ribosomes ( ) are macromolecular machines, found within all cells, that perform biological protein synthesis (mRNA translation). Ribosomes link amino acids together in the order specified by the codons of messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules to f ...

antibodies An antibody (Ab), also known as an immunoglobulin (Ig), is a large, Y-shaped protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The antibody recognizes a unique molecule of the ...

in complex with their

antigen In immunology, an antigen (Ag) is a molecule or molecular structure or any foreign particulate matter or a pollen grain that can bind to a specific antibody or T-cell receptor. The presence of antigens in the body may trigger an immune response. ...

s or proteins of the

complement system The complement system, also known as complement cascade, is a part of the immune system that enhances (complements) the ability of antibodies and phagocytic cells to clear microbes and damaged cells from an organism, promote inflammation, and at ...

. He has developed, in collaboration with Alexander Makarov mass spectrometers with extended mass ranges, specifically suited for the analyses of very large protein complexes, which were later commercialized by the company

ThermoFisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American supplier of scientific instrumentation, reagents and consumables, and software services. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher was formed through the merger of Thermo Electron and Fisher ...

as the

Orbitrap In mass spectrometry, Orbitrap is an ion trap mass analyzer consisting of an outer barrel-like electrode and a coaxial inner spindle-like electrode that traps ions in an orbital motion around the spindle. The image current from the trapped ions is ...

EMR and UHMR. In proteomics, Heck is most renowned for his work on quantitative proteomics, interactomics, and the analysis of

post-translational modification Post-translational modification (PTM) is the covalent and generally enzymatic modification of proteins following protein biosynthesis. This process occurs in the endoplasmic reticulum and the golgi apparatus. Proteins are synthesized by ribosome ...

of proteins using mass spectrometry, with a focus on

protein phosphorylation Protein phosphorylation is a reversible post-translational modification of proteins in which an amino acid residue is phosphorylated by a protein kinase by the addition of a covalently bound phosphate group. Phosphorylation alters the structural ...

and protein glycosylation. This started with the introduction of the material TiO₂ as a method for the targeted analysis of phosphopeptides in 2004. The methods developed by Heck have been adopted by many scientists in other fields, to study how protein expression and phosphorylation are regulated in human cells and tissues by different biological processes and disease states. Additionally, he advocated the use of complementary

protease A protease (also called a peptidase, proteinase, or proteolytic enzyme) is an enzyme that catalyzes (increases reaction rate or "speeds up") proteolysis, breaking down proteins into smaller polypeptides or single amino acids, and spurring the ...

s in shot-gun proteomics and he introduced and developed novel peptide fragmentation strategies to elucidate site specific post-translational modifications. The latter improves determination of peptide and protein sequence information, which is particular helpful for the analysis of

glycopeptide Glycopeptides are peptides that contain carbohydrate moieties (glycans) covalently attached to the side chains of the amino acid residues that constitute the peptide. Over the past few decades it has been recognised that glycans on cell surfac ...

s and HLA antigens. Heck also contributed to the field of cross-linking mass spectrometry, through proteome wide cross-linking experiments, and the development of novel fragmentation methods and the software suite XlinkX. Albert Heck is closely involved in coordinating access to proteomics infrastructures in the Netherlands and in Europe. Since 2003 Heck is scientific director of the

Netherlands Proteomics Centre The Netherlands Proteomics Centre (NPC) is a Dutch people, Dutch research center in the field of proteomics. The research is focused on the proteome, the entire set of proteins expressed by a genome, Cell (biology), cell, Tissue (biology), tissue ...

. From 2011 to 2015 he was coordinator of PRIME-XS, and since 2019 he coordinates EPIC-XS, both collaborative projects funded by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

to enable access to

technology for researchers throughout Europe.

Honours and awards

Heck received numerous awards and prizes for his scientific contributions. He received The

KNCV The Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (In Dutch: ''Koninklijke Nederlandse Chemische Vereniging'', abbreviated: KNCV) is a learned society and professional association founded in 1903 to represent the interests of chemists and chemical engineers ...

golden medal in 2001, the

Descartes-Huygens Prize The Descartes-Huygens Prize is an yearly scientific prize created in 1995 by the French and the Dutch governments, and attributed to two scientists of international level, a French one chosen by the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschapp ...

from the

Académie de Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the ...

in 2006, the Life Science Award of the German Mass Spectrometry Society in 2010, the Discovery Award in Proteomic Sciences from the

Human Proteome Organization The Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) is an international consortium of national proteomics research associations, government researchers, academic institutions, and industry partners. The organization was launched in February 2001, and it promotes ...

in 2013 and the UePA Pioneer Proteomics Award in 2014. Since 2014 he is a member of the

European Molecular Biology Organization The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 1,800 life scientists. Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds cour ...

. In 2014, Heck was elected a member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

. The

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

honoured Albert Heck with the '

Frank H. Field Frank Henry Field (February 27, 1922 – April 12, 2013) was an American chemist and mass spectrometrist known for his work in the development of chemical ionization. Early life and education Frank Field was born in Keansburg, New Jersey, on Febru ...

and Joe L. Franklin Award for Outstanding Achievements in Mass Spectrometry' in 2015. In 2017, he was awarded the

, the highest scientific distinction in the Netherlands for his "major contribution to the worldwide breakthrough of systematically mapping all proteins in human cells and their biological functions by means of mass spectrometry". In 2018, he received the Sir Hans Krebs Medal of the

Federation of European Biochemical Societies The Federation of the European Biochemical Societies, frequently abbreviated FEBS, is an international scientific society promoting activities in biochemistry, molecular biology and related research areas in Europe and neighbouring regions. It was f ...

(FEBS) and the Thomson Medal Award of the

International Mass Spectrometry Society The International Mass Spectrometry Foundation (IMSF) is a non-profit scientific organization in the field of mass spectrometry. It operates the International Mass Spectrometry Society, which consists of 37 member societies and sponsors the Inte ...

(IMSC).

References

External links

*
Website of the EU proteomics infrastructure project EPIC-XS
*
Website of the Netherlands Proteomics Centre
*
Website of the Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Group
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heck, Albert J.R. 1964 births Living people 20th-century Dutch biologists 20th-century Dutch chemists Mass spectrometrists Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Goes University of Amsterdam alumni Academic staff of Utrecht University Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam alumni Spinoza Prize winners Thomson Medal recipients 21st-century Dutch chemists