Protein map of model plant
17 Mar 2020
Scientists have created the first comprehensive map of the proteome of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
For 40 years, this rather inconspicuous weed with small white flowers has been the "laboratory mouse" of plant biology. It is small, generally undemanding and easy to grow. These properties have paved the way for its frequent us in genetics and molecular biology. The team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now mapped around 18,000 of all the proteins in the plant.
Professor Bernhard Kuster, Professor of Proteomics and Bioanalytics at TUM. Said: "For the first time, we have comprehensively mapped the proteome, that is, all proteins from the tissues of the model plant Arabidopsis. This allows new insights into the complex biology of plants."
The team used liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, which enables the analysis of thousands of proteins in parallel in one experiment and bioinformatics methods helped analyze the huge amounts of data.
"To form the protein pattern, it is not only important which proteins are present in a tissue, but, more importantly, in what quantities," said Professor Kuster. For example, proteins of the photosynthesis machinery are found primarily in leaves, but also in seeds, yet at a thousand times lower levels.
All results of the research work were summarized in a virtual atlas. All data is freely available in the online database ProteomicsDB (https://www.proteomicsdb.org/), which already contains a protein catalog for the human proteome, which the same team at TUM decoded in 2014.
