Quantitative protein profiling of hippocampus during human aging.

Xu B¹, Gao Y¹, Zhan S¹, Xiong F¹, Qiu W², Qian X², Wang T², Wang N², Zhang D², Yang Q², Wang R³, Bao X³, Dou W³, Tian R³, Meng S¹, Gai WP⁴, Huang Y⁵, Yan XX⁶, Ge W⁷, Ma C⁸.

Neurobiol Aging. 2016 Mar; 39: 46-56.

PMID: 26923401 DOI: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2015.11.029Abstract

Abstract
The hippocampus appears commonly affected by aging and various neurologic disorders in humans, whereas little is known about age-related change in overall protein expression in this brain structure. Using the 4-plex tandem mass tag labeling, we carried out a quantitative proteomic study of the hippocampus during normal aging using postmortem brains from Chinese subjects. Hippocampal samples from 16 subjects died of non-neurological/psychiatric diseases were divided into 4 age groups: 22-49, 50-69, 70-89, and >90. Among 4582 proteins analyzed, 35 proteins were significantly elevated, whereas 25 proteins were downregulated, along with increasing age. Several upregulated proteins, including transgelin, vimentin, myosin regulatory light polypeptide 9, and calcyphosin, were further verified by quantitative Western blot analysis of hippocampal tissues from additional normal subjects. Bioinformatic analysis showed that the upregulated and downregulated proteins were largely involved in several important protein-protein interaction networks. Proteins in the electron transport chain and synaptic vesicle fusion pathway were consistently downregulated with aging, whereas proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease showed little change. Our study demonstrates substantial protein profile changes in the human hippocampus during aging, which could be of relevance to age-related loss of hippocampal functions.
Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.