Determining Synthesis Rates of Individual Proteins in Zebrafish Danio rerio with Low Levels of a Stable Isotope Labelled Amino Acid

Geary, B.; Magee, K.; Cash, P.; et al.

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an established model organism for studying cardiovascular disease. To better understand protein flux in the myocardium, Doherty MK et al. fed zebrafish low levels of L-Leu (d7), then measured its synthesis and turnover rates over an eight-week labeling period. Bottom-up LC-MS/MS analysis of the heart tissue digests revealed rates of protein synthesis and incorporation for 661 proteins. These were predominantly intracellular, involved in metabolic processes and enriched in nine biochemical pathways (including glycolysis, ATP synthesis, and blood coagulation). This study marks an important step toward integrating genotype-phenotype data.