Project description:Despite the involvement of several serine hydrolases (SHs) in the metabolism of xenobiotics such as dibutyl phthalate (DBP), no study has focused on mapping this enzyme class in zebrafish, a model organism frequently used in ecotoxicology. Here, we survey and identify active SHs in zebrafish larvae and search for biological markers of SH type after exposition to DBP. Zebrafish were exposed to 0, 5, and 100 µg/L DBP from 4 to 120 h post-fertilization. A significant decrease in vitellogenin expression level of about 2-fold compared to the control was found in larvae exposed to 100 µg/L DBP for 120h. The first comprehensive profiling of active SHs in zebrafish proteome was achieved with an activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) approach. Among 49 SHs identified with high confidence, one was the carboxypeptidase ctsa overexpressed in larvae exposed to 100 µg/L DBP for 120h. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a carboxypeptidase has been identified as deregulated following exposure to DBP. The overall results indicate that targeted proteomics approaches such as ABPP can therefore be an asset for understanding the mechanism of action related to xenobiotics in ecotoxicology.
Project description:Identification of hemoglobin-derived fragments generated in the anterior midgut of Rhodnius prolixus in vivo at 14 days post-feeding. The results allowed to draw the hemoglobin cleavage map by midgut-associated peptidases.
Project description:Proteins in the EVs of MCF-10A and MDA-MB-231 cells were determined by mass spectrometry using a timsTOF Pro mass spectrometer (Bruker) coupled to an Aurora Ultimate reverse-phase column (IonOpticks)
Project description:RAD51 protein is an evolutionarily conserved recombinase that plays a central role in homologous recombination (HR) and DNA double strand break (DSB) repair. RAD51 inactivation by small molecules has been proposed as a strategy to impair the BRCA2/RAD51 binding and, ultimately, the HR pathway, with the aim to make cancer cells more sensitive to PARP inhibitors (PARPi). This strategy, which mimics a synthetic lethality (SL) approach, has been successfully assayed in vitro by using myr-BRC4, a peptide derived from the fourth BRC repeat of BRCA2, being the strongest reported natural RAD51 binder. The present study applies a method to obtain a proteomic fingerprint for RAD51 inhibition by the myr-BRC4 peptide (designed for a more efficient cell entry) using a mass spectroscopy (MS) proteomic approach. We performed a comparative proteomic profiling of the myr-BRC4 treated vs. untreated BxPC-3 pancreatic cancer cells and evaluated the differential expression of proteins. Among the identified proteomic hits, we focused our attention on proteins shared by both the RAD51 and the BRCA2 interactomes, and on those whose reduction showed high statistical significance. Three downregulated proteins were identified (FANCI, FANCD2, and RPA3) and protein downregulation was confirmed through immunoblotting analysis, validating the MS approach. Our results suggest that, being a direct consequence of RAD51 inhibition, the detection of FANCD2, FANCI, and RPA3 downregulation could be used as an indicator for monitoring HR impairment.
Project description:The age and sex of studied animals profoundly impacts experimental outcomes in animal-based biomedical research. However, most preclinical studies in mice use a wide-spanning age range from 4 to 14 weeks and do not assess study parameters in male and female mice in parallel. This raises concerns regarding reproducibility and neglect of potentially relevant age and sex differences. Furthermore, the molecular setup of tissues in dependence of age and sex is unknown in naïve mice precluding efficient translational research. Here, we first compared two different mass spectrometric acquisition methods – DDA- and DIA-PASEF – in order to maximize the depth of proteome quantitation. We then employed an optimized workflow of quantitative proteomics based on DIA-PASEF followed by DIA-NN data analysis, and revealed significant differences in mouse paw skin and sciatic nerve (SCN) when comparing (i) male and female mice, and, in parallel, (ii) adolescent mice (4 weeks) with adult mice (14 weeks).