Tagging and Enriching Proteins Enables Cell-Specific Proteomics

Cell Chem Biol. 2016 Jul 21;23(7):805-815. doi: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2016.05.018.

Abstract

Cell-specific proteomics in multicellular systems and whole animals is a promising approach to understand the differentiated functions of cells and tissues. Here, we extend our stochastic orthogonal recoding of translation (SORT) approach for the co-translational tagging of proteomes with a cyclopropene-containing amino acid in response to diverse codons in genetically targeted cells, and create a tetrazine-biotin probe containing a cleavable linker that offers a way to enrich and identify tagged proteins. We demonstrate that SORT with enrichment, SORT-E, efficiently recovers and enriches SORT tagged proteins and enables specific identification of enriched proteins via mass spectrometry, including low-abundance proteins. We show that tagging at distinct codons enriches overlapping, but distinct sets of proteins, suggesting that tagging at more than one codon enhances proteome coverage. Using SORT-E, we accomplish cell-specific proteomics in the fly. These results suggest that SORT-E will enable the definition of cell-specific proteomes in animals during development, disease progression, and learning and memory.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acids / chemistry
  • Amino Acids / metabolism
  • Animals
  • Azo Compounds / chemistry
  • Biotin / chemistry
  • Drosophila Proteins / chemistry
  • Drosophila Proteins / genetics
  • Drosophila Proteins / metabolism*
  • Drosophila melanogaster / cytology*
  • Female
  • Genetic Code
  • Mass Spectrometry
  • Molecular Probes / chemical synthesis
  • Molecular Probes / chemistry*
  • Molecular Structure
  • Protein Transport
  • Proteomics*
  • Tetrazoles / chemistry

Substances

  • Amino Acids
  • Azo Compounds
  • Drosophila Proteins
  • Molecular Probes
  • Tetrazoles
  • Biotin
  • azobenzene