Title:Proteomic Analysis of Phosphorylation in the Brain
VOLUME: 9 ISSUE: 3
Author(s):Ry Y. Tweedie-Cullen, Andrea M. Brunner and Isabelle M. Mansuy
Affiliation:Brain Research Institute, Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich and Department of Health Science and Technology of the ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland.
Keywords:Brain, isobaric tagging, neuroproteomics, nerve cell/neuron, quantitative mass spectrometry, phosphoproteomics,
phosphorylation, phosphopeptide enrichment, stable isotope labelling
Abstract:Protein phosphorylation is a key post-translational modification that controls intracellular signalling in
virtually all cell types. In the nervous system, it contributes to the regulation of neuronal signalling, and processes
underlying synaptic plasticity and cognitive functions. Despite its importance for brain functions, knowledge about the
brain phosphoproteome has remained incomplete. A pre-requisite for gaining such knowledge and better understanding
the molecular and biochemical bases of brain functions is to carry out quantitative analyses of protein phosphorylation
and its dynamics. Such analyses require high-throughput methodologies, which in recent years, have greatly
benefited from advances in proteomics and genomics, and have been combined with computational modelling.
Current phosphoproteomic workflows have reached a level of maturity that permits their combination with molecular
approaches, and their application to the study of higher-order brain functions and cognitive processes. Neuroproteomics
has thus emerged as an important novel sub-field of neurosciences. This review focuses on the proteomic
methodologies currently used to study phosphorylation in the brain, and recent examples of their application.
