The University of Pittsburgh and Northwestern University conducted a collaborative study to develop a method that will enable the science community to easily examine and identify proteins contained in the brain neurons of animals.
The study aims to sort out and specify the numerous proteins located in our brain that could reveal a hidden solution towards the neurological conundrums of the human brain, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The examination of the neural proteins was made possible through the help of mouse subjects.
Identifying Neuroproteomes
The neuroscience investigation was able to come up with a solution that could categorize the proteins in our brain, also called the neuroproteomes. The study was a bit challenging for the experts since there are vast neural cell-type transcriptomes and proteomes across the vertebrate brain.
The proteins in the human brain, according to the study, are essential to understand more about the neural circuit's specific function and development. The study was the first to define and classify human brain proteins since the study of cell-type proteomes is among the hardest topics in neuroscience.
The difficulty of gathering data from these complex types of tissue is brought by the suboptimal properties of the proteomes themselves. Harvesting these nuclear proteins often results in an incomplete detail from the subcellular compartments and a lack of cell-type information.
The research on neurons and their proteins involved a new approach to label subcellular compartments of neuroproteomes that was conducted with the help of the mouse brain. Additional experiments included traditional imaging, electron microscopy, and mass spectrometry.
The results of the research were published in the journal Nature Communications, titled "Cell-Type and Subcellular Compartment-Specific APEX2 Proximity Labeling Reveals Activity-Dependent Nuclear Proteome Dynamics in the Striatum."
Categorizing Proteins in Neuron Using Enzyme
The enzyme is a biological material that serves as a catalyst throughout the bodies of living organisms. It regulates and speeds up chemical reactions through a precise process while avoiding altering itself.
Enzymes are also classified as proteins, and with that said, it was utilized to be sent in a specific location in the brain of the mouse, and was carried by a virus that the experts have designed in the experiment. The specialized enzymes for the study were harvested from soybeans, and once sent to the brain, it was able to locate and tag the nearby proteins genetically.
The enzyme utility approach was then validated through imaging and electron microscopy. Based on the data gathered from reading the enzyme's collected information, the whole technique was actually able to gather a snapshot of the proteome collection located in the neurons.
Northwestern University expert and senior author of the study Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy said that their examination was the first to categorize the cell-type structure successfully. Most of the previous proteome investigations were conducted with cellular cultures, but in vitro observation does not match up with the conditions that are happening in a living brain.
According to a report by GEN News, further research will take place regarding the categorizing of neuroproteomes in mouse models to provide more knowledge about neurological diseases that have no current solutions available.
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