The peripheral nervous system has been widely implicated in pathological conditions that exhibit distinct clinical presentations in men and women, most notably in chronic pain disorders. Here, we explored this sexual dimorphism at a molecular level. We expanded the available omics landscape in the PNS to include quantitative proteomics of the human dorsal root ganglia (hDRG) and nerve.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOur understanding of how sex and age influence chronic pain at the molecular level is still limited with wide-reaching consequences for adolescent patients. Here, we leveraged deep proteome profiling of mouse dorsal root ganglia (DRG) from adolescent (4-week-old) and adult (12-week-old) male and female mice to investigate the establishment of neuropathic pain in the spared nerve injury (SNI)-model in parallel. We quantified over 12,000 proteins, including notable ion channels involved in pain, highlighting the sensitivity of our approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Metaproteomics is a rapidly advancing field that offers unique insights into the taxonomic composition and the functional activity of microbial communities, and their effects on host physiology. Classically, data-dependent acquisition (DDA) mass spectrometry (MS) has been applied for peptide identification and quantification in metaproteomics. However, DDA-MS exhibits well-known limitations in terms of depth, sensitivity, and reproducibility.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Acute pain after surgery is common and often leads to chronic post-surgical pain, but neither treatment nor prevention is currently sufficient. We hypothesised that specific protein networks (protein-protein interactions) are relevant for pain after surgery in humans and mice.
Methods: Standardised surgical incisions were performed in male human volunteers and male mice.
The age and sex of studied animals profoundly impact experimental outcomes in biomedical research. However, most preclinical studies in mice use a wide-spanning age range from 4 to 20 weeks and do not assess male and female mice in parallel. This raises concerns regarding reproducibility and neglects potentially relevant age and sex differences, which are largely unknown at the molecular level in naïve mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a debilitating side-effect of cancer therapies. So far, the development of CIPN cannot be prevented, neither can established CIPN be reverted, often leading to the cessation of necessary chemotherapy. Thus, there is an urgent need to explore the mechanistic basis of CIPN to facilitate its treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSensitization of the transient receptor potential ion channel vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) is critically involved in inflammatory pain. To date, manifold signaling cascades have been shown to converge onto TRPV1 and enhance its sensitization. However, many of them also play a role for nociceptive pain, which limits their utility as targets for therapeutic intervention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo obtain a thorough understanding of chronic pain, large-scale molecular mapping of the pain axis at the protein level is necessary, but has not yet been achieved. We applied quantitative proteome profiling to build a comprehensive protein compendium of three regions of the pain neuraxis in mice: the sciatic nerve (SN), the dorsal root ganglia (DRG), and the spinal cord (SC). Furthermore, extensive bioinformatics analysis enabled us to reveal unique protein subsets which are specifically enriched in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and SC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComprehensive, reproducible and precise analysis of large sample cohorts is one of the key objectives of quantitative proteomics. Here, we present an implementation of data-independent acquisition using its parallel acquisition nature that surpasses the limitation of serial MS2 acquisition of data-dependent acquisition on a quadrupole ultra-high field Orbitrap mass spectrometer. In deep single shot data-independent acquisition, we identified and quantified 6,383 proteins in human cell lines using 2-or-more peptides/protein and over 7100 proteins when including the 717 proteins that were identified on the basis of a single peptide sequence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpioids, agonists of µ-opioid receptors (µORs), are the strongest pain killers clinically available. Their action includes a strong central component, which also causes important adverse effects. However, µORs are also found on the peripheral endings of nociceptors and their activation there produces meaningful analgesia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article has been withdrawn by the authors. This article did not comply with the editorial guidelines of MCP. Specifically, single peptide based protein identifications of 9-19% were included in the analysis and discussed in the results and conclusions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe use of data-independent acquisition (DIA) approaches for the reproducible and precise quantification of complex protein samples has increased in the last years. The protein information arising from DIA analysis is stored in digital protein maps (DIA maps) that can be interrogated in a targeted way by using ad hoc or publically available peptide spectral libraries generated on the same sample species as for the generation of the DIA maps. The restricted availability of certain difficult-to-obtain human tissues (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ability of sensory neurons to detect potentially harmful stimuli relies on specialized molecular signal detectors such as transient receptor potential (TRP) A1 ion channels. TRPA1 is critically implicated in vertebrate nociception and different pain states. Furthermore, TRPA1 channels are subject to extensive modulation and regulation - processes which consequently affect nociceptive signaling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ability of somatosensory neurons to perceive mechanical stimuli relies on specialized mechanotransducing proteins and their molecular environment. Only recently has the identity of a major transducer of mechanical forces in vertebrates been revealed by the discovery of Piezo2. Further work has established its pivotal role for innocuous touch in mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic pain is a complex disease with limited treatment options. Several profiling efforts have been employed with the aim to dissect its molecular underpinnings. However, generated results are often inconsistent and nonoverlapping, which is largely because of inherent technical constraints.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the last 2 decades biomedical research has provided great insights into the molecular signatures underlying painful conditions. However, chronic pain still imposes substantial challenges to researchers, clinicians and patients alike. Under pathological conditions, pain therapeutics often lack efficacy and exhibit only minimal safety profiles, which can be largely attributed to the targeting of molecules with key physiological functions throughout the body.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF