Functional Neuroproteomics: An Imperative Approach for Unravelling Protein Implicated Complexities of Brain

Abstract

: A proteome is defined as a comprehensive protein set either of an organ or an organism at a given time and under specific physiological conditions and accordingly, the study of nervous system’s proteomes is called Neuroproteomics. In the neuroproteomics process, various pieces of the nervous system are “fragmented” to understand the dynamics of each given sub-proteome in a much better way. Functional proteomics addresses the organisation of proteins into complexes, and formation of organelles from these multiprotein complexes that control various physiological processes. Current functional studies of neuroproteomics mainly talk about the synapse structure and its organisation, the major building site of the neuronal communication channel. The proteomes of synaptic vesicle, presynaptic terminal, and postsynaptic density, have been examined by various proteomics techniques. The objective of functional neuroproteomics is to solve the proteome of single neurons or astrocytes grown in cell cultures or from the primary brain cells isolated from tissues under various conditions; to identify set of proteins which characterize a specific pathogenesis; or to determine the group of proteins making up post-synaptic or pre-synaptic densities. It is very usual to try to solve a particular sub-proteome like the heatshock response proteome, or the proteome responding to inflammation. Posttranslational protein modifications alter their functions and interactions. The techniques to detect synapse phosphoproteome are available however, those for the analysis of ubiquitination and sumoylation, are under development.

Cell-Type-Specific Neuroproteomics of Synapses

“…Proteomics is the study of the proteome, the comprehensive set of proteins expressed by a genome in a cell, and neuroproteomics is the study of proteomes in the nervous system [ 4 ]. Unlike the proteomic analysis of other tissues, neuroproteomics is particularly challenging due to the need for cell-type-, region-, and temporal-specific analyses.…”

Advances in neuroproteomics for neurotrauma: unraveling insights for personalized medicine and future prospects

“…Proteomics studies are conducted in-vivo and in-vitro through various approaches and can create models for multiple conditions related to protein concentration levels and structure modifications. PTMs are crucial for the characterization and analysis of numerous diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders (9).…”

“…It is classified into four categories: Expression Neuroproteomics, Functional Neuroproteomics, Clinical Neuroproteomics, and Neuroproteomics Informatics (2). The first category focuses on profiling the proteome, the second one investigates the functional properties of individual sets of proteins (9), the third aims at discovering drugs and novel biomarkers for pathological conditions (17,18), and the fourth is dedicated to computational tools and specific databases enabling the analysis of proteomics data sets (19)(20)(21)(22). With information from all four categories, a neuroscientist can propose new algorithms and faster outputs to conduct clinical prognosis and diagnosis.…”