Flat-pack assembly and mass spectrometry
Have you ever wondered at the various types of screw heads you find in a typical piece of flat-packed furniture?
There's actually good reason to use a variety of different screw heads as they all convey different properties. These properties can be related to screw manufacturing cost and ease (which we, consumers, generally don't care about), but they also influence things we're all too familiar with. A prime example of the latter is the amount of torque that can be applied to the screw head before 'camming' out - which is the slipping of the driver tool out of the screw head, possibly 'stripping' the screw head profile in the process. Interestingly, some screws are specifically designed to allow camming (to prevent overfitting), whereas others are specifically designed to prevent it.
When we're assembling our furniture, we typically don't care about the idiosyncrasies of screw types - after all, we're too busy figuring out the assembly manual. But when we are planning proteomics experiments, we do need to realize the properties of the technologies we're using. So, make sure you have an idea of the specific strengths and weaknesses of the technologies and approaches available to you before you start your experiments. You're likely to save a lot of time and disappointment!
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