Effects of post-mortem delay on protein levels in human brain samples
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1
Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Semmelweis Univer, Hungary
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2
Department of Zoology, University of West Hungary, Hungary
The number of proteomics studies using human brain samples has been increasing in recent years. Therefore, it is important to determinate the possibilities and limitations of post-mortem human brain tissues for protein studies. The post-mortem delay is one of the unavoidable factors to investigate. Brain proteins exposed to long post-mortem interval may be altered by degradation processes. The degradation may vary depending on the particular type of proteins. Based on the results a previous pilot study, we assumed that the degree of protein degradation might be different in different brain areas despite of similar post-mortem conditions. Factors, such as cell and synaptic densities, structural (neuronal, glial, fiber) elements in the samples must be taken into consideration. Therefore, we performed a systematic study on the effect of both post-mortem delay and structural differences of brain areas. We examined the degradation of two proteins (a relatively resistant protein: β-actin and a vulnerable protein: rab3a) in neurosurgical brain samples with 0, 5, 15, 30, 60, 180 min post-mortem delay, as well as in brain sampes from the Human Brain Tissue Bank with different post-mortem intervals (1, 4.5, 8, and 16 hours) by Western blot analysis. Protein levels in homogeneous human brain samples from the occipital cortex (high cell density), the cerebellar cortex (high cell density), the cerebellar white matter (mostly fibers with glial cells), the red nucleus (average cell density) and from the putamen (special synaptic formation) are presented. The analysis of the regional differences in the degradation process should be performed in each post-mortem degradation curves taken from particular brain regions for each investigated protein to reduce variations of data obtained from human protein studies.
FP6 EU Grant BrainNet II LSHM-CT-2004-503039
Conference:
12th Meeting of the Hungarian Neuroscience Society, Budapest, Hungary, 22 Jan - 24 Jan, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Pathophysiology and neurology - non-degenerative disorders
Citation:
Balázsa
T,
Árpád
D,
Zsolt
K and
Miklós
P
(2009). Effects of post-mortem delay on protein levels in human brain samples.
Front. Syst. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
12th Meeting of the Hungarian Neuroscience Society.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.01.2009.04.251
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Received:
13 Mar 2009;
Published Online:
13 Mar 2009.
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Correspondence:
Tamás László Balázsa, Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Semmelweis Univer, Budapest, Hungary, balazsat@ana.sote.hu