What was
done under the new study?
In the new study,
researchers engineered a virus to send an enzyme to a precise location in the
brain of a living mouse. The enzyme, derived from soybeans, genetically tagged
(protein segments that can be fused to a protein of interest to make it
fluorescent, making them easy to detect) its neighboring proteins in a
predetermined location.
The
researchers after validating the technique by imaging the brain with
fluorescence and electron microscopy found that their technique took a snapshot
of the entire set of proteins inside the living neurons, which can then be
analyzed postmortem with mass spectroscopy.
By tagging
the proteins and their neighbors, experts are now able to see and study the protein
workup within a localised, controlled area and how they interaction with one
another.
Scientist used
their virus to carry a separate green fluorescent protein, along with the virus
carrying the soybean enzyme.
Kozorovitskiy from Northwestern University who is also a senior author of the study stated that the virus essentially acts as a message that we deliver and in this case, the message carried this special soybean enzyme.
Similarly,
in a separate message, the scientists sent the green fluorescent proteins so
they could observe which neurons were tagged. Neurons that became green, they inferred
that the soybean enzyme was expressed in those units.
Till date
protein tagging had taken a backseat as researcher have never been able to amplify
and sequence them in the same way as genes and RNA could be. For proteins
researchers break them down into peptides (number of amino acid linked in chains) and
then place them back together.
Kozorovitskiy states that even though
proteins have been out of the loop, everyone recognizes the significance of
proteins as they are the ultimate effectors in the cells. Understanding where
the proteins are, how they work, and how they work relative to each other is
extremely important.
What is the significance
behind this research?
With the
validation of the new method, scientist now, will be able to apply them to mouse
models to learn and comprehend about various neurological diseases.
"We are hoping to extend this
approach to start identifying the biochemical modifications on neuronal
proteins that occur during specific patterns of brain activity or with changes
induced by neuroactive drugs to facilitate clinical advances,"
Dumrongprechachan said.
"We look forward to taking this
to models related to brain diseases and connect those studies to postmortem
proteomics (large scale study of proteins produced in an organism) work in the human brain," Kozorovitskiy said. "It's ready
to be applied to those models, and we can't wait to get started."
The study
published on 11 August 2021 in the journal Nature Communications, has taken an
enormous leap towards understanding the brain's millions of distinct proteins,
thereby improving our diagnosis and treatment for various neurological illnesses.
