APEX is an engineered peroxidase that functions both as an electron microscopy tag, and as a promiscuous labeling enzyme for live-cell proteomics. Because the limited sensitivity of APEX precludes applications requiring low APEX expression, we used yeast display evolution to improve its catalytic efficiency. Our evolved APEX2 is far more active in cells, enabling the superior enrichment of endogenous mitochondrial and endoplasmic reticulum membrane proteins and the use of electron microscopy to resolve the sub-mitochondrial localization of calcium uptake regulatory protein MICU1.

The mammalian mitochondrial proteome is under dual genomic control, with 99% of proteins encoded by the nuclear genome and 13 originating from the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). We previously developed MitoCarta, a catalogue of over 1000 genes encoding the mammalian mitochondrial proteome. This catalogue was compiled using a Bayesian integration of multiple sequence features and experimental datasets, notably protein mass spectrometry of mitochondria isolated from fourteen murine tissues. Here, we introduce MitoCarta3.0. Beginning with the MitoCarta2.0 inventory, we performed manual review to remove 100 genes and introduce 78 additional genes, arriving at an updated inventory of 1136 human genes. We now include manually curated annotations of sub-mitochondrial localization (matrix, inner membrane, intermembrane space, outer membrane) as well as assignment to 149 hierarchical ‘MitoPathways’ spanning seven broad functional categories relevant to mitochondria. MitoCarta3.0, including sub-mitochondrial localization and MitoPathway annotations, is freely available at http://www.broadinstitute.org/mitocarta and should serve as a continued community resource for mitochondrial biology and medicine.