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Making brain proteomics true to type

Nature Biotechnology volume 36, pages 149–150 (2018)Cite this article

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Two independent but related strategies use unnatural amino acid incorporation to enable in vivo cell-type-specific proteomics in the mouse brain.

The mammalian central nervous system (CNS) comprises a dense network of hundreds to thousands of distinct cell types that are anatomically and functionally distinct. Although next-generation RNA-seq approaches are providing an unprecedented view of mRNA dynamics in specific subtypes of neurons and glia, including at the single-cell level1,2, proteomics of the mammalian brain has lagged behind. Two recent studies in Nature Biotechnology3,4 use similar strategies to selectively label and analyze the proteomes in the murine CNS. These approaches will allow in-depth biochemical access to protein expression and protein modification in specific neuronal cell types in a wide variety of in vivo models linked to normal and pathological brain function.

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Figure 1: Schematic overview of two novel approaches for cell-type-specific protein labeling in neurons of the mouse brain.

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  1. angus.nairn@yale.edu

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rashaun S. Wilson and Angus C. Nairn are in the Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.,

    Rashaun S Wilson & Angus C Nairn

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  1. Rashaun S Wilson
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  2. Angus C Nairn
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Correspondence to Rashaun S Wilson or Angus C Nairn.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Wilson, R., Nairn, A. Making brain proteomics true to type. Nat Biotechnol 36, 149–150 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4077

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