We recently under took a series of phospho proteomics screening projects with Dr Chris Tape.

This was to examine the very changes to phosphorylation signalling events in fibroblastic reticular cells when in contact with dendritic cells, and has given us some very interesting hits which we are now working with. We expected no changes to the total proteome, and would use the proteome to measure changes in phosphorylation against.

However, at just 15 minutes stimulation, we saw a loss of histone proteins, many different histones. Now since histones are very stable proteins, and the cells are still living, in fact these changes are reversible at later time points, we don’t think they can be being degraded (but tell me if you think that’s incorrect). In which case, are they missing from our analysis because they are now insoluble?

We’re not a lab that deals with the inner workings of DNA in the nucleus, so this is still quite mysterious. If you’ve seen something like this before, or have an idea what this means, please let us know. For those of you wondering what the few points are on the left hand side of the plot, these correspond the protein we added to stimulate the cells. So that part we can explain…

 

proteome 15 min