Fernández-Taboada E, Rodríguez-Esteban G, Saló E, Abril JF. A proteomics approach to decipher the molecular nature of planarian stem cells.
BMC Genomics 2011;
12:133. [PMID:
21356107 PMCID:
PMC3058083 DOI:
10.1186/1471-2164-12-133]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/08/2010] [Accepted: 02/28/2011] [Indexed: 01/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Background
In recent years, planaria have emerged as an important model system for research into stem cells and regeneration. Attention is focused on their unique stem cells, the neoblasts, which can differentiate into any cell type present in the adult organism. Sequencing of the Schmidtea mediterranea genome and some expressed sequence tag projects have generated extensive data on the genetic profile of these cells. However, little information is available on their protein dynamics.
Results
We developed a proteomic strategy to identify neoblast-specific proteins. Here we describe the method and discuss the results in comparison to the genomic high-throughput analyses carried out in planaria and to proteomic studies using other stem cell systems. We also show functional data for some of the candidate genes selected in our proteomic approach.
Conclusions
We have developed an accurate and reliable mass-spectra-based proteomics approach to complement previous genomic studies and to further achieve a more accurate understanding and description of the molecular and cellular processes related to the neoblasts.
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