Proteome profiling of rat brain cortical changes during early postnatal brain development
Label free quantitation (LFQ) was applied to proteome profiling of rat brain cortical development during the early postnatal period. Male and female rat brain extracts were prepared using a convenient, detergent-free sample preparation technique at postnatal development days (PND) 2, 8, 15, 22. The PND protein ratios were calculated using Proteome Discoverer, and the PND protein change profiles were constructed separately for male and female animals for key presynaptic, postsynaptic and adhesion brain proteins. The profiles were compared to the analogous profiles assembled from the published mouse and rat cortex proteomic data, including the fractionated-synaptosome data. The PND protein-change trendlines, Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) and linear regression analysis of the statistically significant PND protein changes were used in the comparative analysis of the datasets. The analysis identified similarities and differences between the datasets. Importantly, there were significant similarities in the comparison of the rat cortex PND vs. mouse PND profiles. The male and the female rat cortex PND profiles were expectedly almost identical, which also substantiated this LFQ nanoflow liquid chromatography – high resolution mass spectrometry approach to the PND protein profiling.