Laurence Florens

Biography

Proteomics scientist Laurence Florens specializes in large-scale applications of liquid-chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry and is particularly interested in developing cutting-edge label free quantitative proteomics tools that can be readily applied to biological problems. A native of France, Florens graduated from Nice University with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. She received her masters and her doctorate in structural biology and microbiology from Aix-Marseilles I University before completing a postdoctoral fellowship in bioenergetics at Michigan State University in East Lansing. After a short stint at the University of Washington in Seattle, Florens joined the lab of Dr. J.R. Yates, III, at The Scripps Research Institute. At TSRI, she applied Multidimensional Protein Identification Technology (MudPIT) to malaria proteomics and successfully distinguished more than 3,000 proteins at different stages of the parasite’s life cycle; identified novel parasite antigens on the surface of red blood cells and in the sporozoite stage; and established the proteome of the midgut peritrophic matrix in the mosquito Anopheles gambiae. In 2003, Florens joined the Stowers Institute, where she collaborates closely with Stowers investigators on a wide array of projects to analyze the dynamics of protein complexes and their post-translational modifications.

Research Interest

Proteomics, Protein Identification