Biology subjects

Lam, M. P. Y.

Publications and source records attributed to Lam, M. P. Y..

16 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Subcellular spatiotemporal proteomics delineates distinct phases of ER stress proteostatic response

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is associated with many human diseases, but current understanding of how ER stress responses reshape the stressed proteome over time is still emerging. Specifically, how organellar protein quality control and clearance pathways coordinate to maintain proteostasis in early and prolonged ER stress is unclear. Here we describe a spatiotemporal proteomic strategy termed simultaneous proteome localization and turnover analysis with time resolution (SPLAT-TR) to interrogate the synthesis, degradation, and localization changes of over 4,000 proteins in early (1-4 hours) and prolonged (16-24 hours) ER stress. As ER stress progresses, each time point is distinguished by distinct protein translocation and clearance regulations, coupled to differential organellar proteostasis and usage of protein degradation pathways. Mitochondria show a bimodal response, with a shift from early activation of respiratory protein towards protein quality control pathways in prolonged stress, coinciding with energetics decline. In the Golgi, the increased clearance of collagen proteins is paradoxically coupled to an increased synthesis of secretory pathway components, suggesting removal by secretion. In the ER, the proteome remodels under prolonged stress via increased synthesis of UFMylation and ER-phagy-related proteins coupled to the selective degradation of ER membrane and microdomain proteins. Inhibition of UFMylation alters ER-phagy receptor usage and synergistically induces stress-induced cell death. These results present a systematic delineation of cell compartment proteostasis under unfolded protein response and highlight the utility of SPLAT-TR to investigate time-dependent cellular events.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2026

Tracking cellular biomolecular condensate dynamics under proteostatic stress with middle-down phosphoproteomics

Coordination of biological function requires the partition of cellular components including into biomolecular condensates, but an overall landscape of how protein compartmentalize into higher-order assemblies under stress is still emerging. We apply proteome-wide solubility profiling to compare the compositions of NP-40-insoluble proteins and their phosphorylation status, using a new mass spectrometry-based hybrid bottom-up and chemical middle-down proteomics approach to analyze the solubility behavior of 8,740 proteins and 31,647 phosphopeptides under normal and ER stress conditions. Cell stress induces a pervasive differential partition of proteins in and out of detergent-insoluble cellular compartments. This differential partition is partially orthogonal to stress-induced abundance changes and comprises both phosphorylation-dependent and phosphorylation-independent mechanisms. Whereas phosphorylation-independent partition changes involve largely secretory pathway proteins and implicate higher-order assemblies of chaperones and clients, phosphorylation-based partitions suggest a dynamic rearrangement of biomolecular condensate compositions across cytoplasmic and nuclear ribonucleoprotein assemblies. The accumulation of serine/arginine rich (SR) proteins and other annotated nuclear speckle members in the condensate-rich proteome fractions emerges as a central feature of stress-induced remodeling. Our results establish global solubility dynamics as an integral component of proteome stress response and implicates broad involvements of splice factor spatial reorganization as a prominent facet of ER stress response.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2026

Proteogenomic analysis of the differential stability of cardiac protein isoforms

Alternative splicing is an important regulatory layer in gene expression, but knowledge on the isoform protein molecules continue to lag their canonical counterparts. An open question is whether alternative protein isoforms feature different half-life than the canonical counterpart, which could indicate differential usage and functional diversification. Here we combined a proteogenomics approach with heavy water-based protein turnover analysis to survey 24 pairs of canonical-alternative protein isoforms in the mouse heart. The results provide a reference on their numerical half-life and also reveal widespread differences in isoform stability.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2025

Micro- and macro- heterogeneity of N-glycoproteome remodeling in endoplasmic reticulum stress

N-glycosylation plays essential roles in the folding, trafficking, and maturation of proteins in the secretory pathways, but how individual protein and residue glycosylation rewires under endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is unknown. Particularly, intact glycopeptide data that retain the connectivity between glycosylation sites and the attached glycans are needed to reveal the micro- and macro- heterogeneity of N-glycosylation sites and their permutations in stressed cells. Here, we developed an optimized magnetic polyethyleneimine boronic acid-containing scaffold (mPBA) enrichment workflow to achieve sensitive and broad enrichment of intact glycoproteins for mass spectrometry analysis, quantifying 13759 unique protein-, site-, and glycoform combinations, termed glycopeptidoforms, in normal and stressed cells while requiring only 0.1 to 0.5 mg total peptide input. The data reveals a systems-level shift in the fate of hundreds of glycoproteins. N-glycosylation changes are highly dynamic, with magnitude far exceeding protein expression changes, and showing complex protein-, site-, and glycan-specific granularity. Individual glycoform reconfigurations can be observed that suggest lesions within specific steps in protein maturation and trafficking pathways. Mannose trimming is disrupted across multiple proteins and cell states, suggesting a central feature of ER stress mediated glycoproteome remodeling. Together, these results reveal molecular details into the remodeling of protein secretory pathways upon ER stress and highlight the utility of mPBA for sensitive N-glycoproteomics studies.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2025

SALVE: prediction of interorgan communication with transcriptome latent space representation

Massive transcriptomics data allow gene relationships to be discovered from their correlated expression. We describe SALVE, a method to infer the associations between secretome-encoding transcripts and gene modules in a distal organ from RNA sequencing data. This method builds upon similar bioinformatics approaches by introducing transcriptome latent space representations and transfer learning to simultaneously increase discovery power and predict downstream functional associations. Applied to GTEx v8 data, we show the method readily recapitulates canonical endocrine relationships, including insulin and adiponectin signaling, while inferring new candidate organokines and their signaling modality. We also explore its utility for generating new hypotheses on cardiokine candidates and finding distal factors that may affect cardiac protein synthesis and metabolism. The predictions suggest a potential role of circulating galectin-3 (LGALS3) in regulating cardiac protein synthesis and homeostasis, which can be recapitulated in part in human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes. This method may aid in ongoing efforts to delineate interorgan communications and endocrine networks in various areas of study. New & NoteworthyWe describe a bioinformatics strategy to find associations between the secretome-coding genes and functional pathways of two organs. This approach may be used to find crosstalk signals between the heart, adipose, liver, and other tissues. Applied to GTEx data, it suggests a potential role of circulating galectin-3 in regulating cardiac protein synthesis and homeostasis pathways.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2025

Deuterium labeling enables proteome wide turnover kinetics analysis in cell culture

The half-life of proteins is tightly regulated and underlies many cellular processes. It remains unclear the extent to which proteins are dynamically synthesized and degraded in different cell types and cell states. We introduce an improved D2O labeling workflow and apply it to examine the landscape of protein turnover in pluripotent and differentiating human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). The majority of hiPSC proteins show minimal turnover beyond cell doubling rates, but we also identify over 100 new fast-turnover proteins not previously described as short-lived. These include proteins that function in cell division and cell cycle checkpoints, that are enriched in APC/C and SPOP degrons, and that are depleted upon pluripotency exit. Differentiation rapidly shifts the set of fast-turnover proteins toward including RNA binding and splicing proteins. The ability to identify fast-turnover proteins in different cell cultures also facilitates secretome analysis, as exemplified by studies of hiPSC-derived cardiac myocytes and primary human cardiac fibroblasts. The presented workflow is broadly applicable to protein turnover studies in diverse primary, pluripotent, and transformed cells.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2024

Improved determination of protein turnover rate with heavy water labeling by mass isotopomer ratio selection

The synthesis and degradation rates of proteins form an essential component of gene expression control. Heavy water labeling has been used in conjunction with mass spectrometry to measure protein turnover rates, but the optimal analytical approaches to derive turnover rates from the isotopomer patterns of deuterium labeled peptides continue to be a subject of research. Here we describe a method, which comprises a reverse lookup of numerically approximated peptide isotope envelopes, coupled to the selection of optimal isotopomer pairs based on peptide sequence, to calculate the molar fraction of new peptide synthesis in heavy water labeling mass spectrometry experiments. We validated this approach using an experimental calibration curve comprising mixtures of fully unlabeled and fully labeled proteomes. We then re-analyzed 17 proteome-wide turnover experiments from four mouse organs, and showed that the method increases the coverage of well-fitted peptides in protein turnover experiments by 25-82%. The method is implemented in the Riana software tool for protein turnover analysis, and may avail ongoing efforts to study the synthesis and degradation kinetics of proteins in animals on a proteome-wide scale. Whats newWe describe a reverse lookup method to calculate the molar fraction of new synthesis from numerically approximated peptide isotopomer profiles in heavy water labeling mass spectrometry experiments. Using an experimental calibration curve comprising mixtures of fully unlabeled and fully labeled proteomes at various proportions, we show that this method provides a straightforward way to calculate the proportion of new proteins in a protein pool from arbitrarily chosen isotopomer ratios. We next analyzed which of the isotopomer pairs within the peptide isotope envelope yielded isotopomer time courses that fit most closely to kinetic models, and found that the identity of the isotopomer pair depends partially on the number of deuterium accessible labeling sites of the peptide. We next derived a strategy to automatically select the isotopomer pairs to calculate turnover rates based on peptide sequence, and showed that this increases the coverage of existing proteome-wide turnover experiments in multiple data sets of the mouse heart, liver, kidney, and skeletal muscle by up to 25-82%.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2024

A Ratiometric Catalog of Protein Isoform Shifts in the Cardiac Fetal Gene Program

Pathological cardiac remodeling is associated with the reactivation of fetal genes, yet the extent of the hearts fetal gene program and its impact on proteome compositions remain incompletely understood. Here, using a new proteome-wide protein ratio quantification strategy with mass spectrometry, we identify pervasive isoform usage shifts in fetal and postnatal mouse hearts, involving 145 pairs of highly homologous paralogs and alternative splicing-derived isoform proteins. Proteome-wide ratio comparisons readily rediscover hallmark fetal gene signatures in muscle contraction and glucose metabolism pathways, while revealing novel isoform usage in mitochondrial and gene expression proteins, including PPA1/PPA2, ANT1/ANT2, and PCBP1/PCBP2 switches. Paralogs with differential fetal usage tend to be evolutionarily recent, consistent with functional diversification. Alternative splicing adds another rich source of fetal isoform usage differences, involving PKM M1/M2, GLS-1 KGA/GAC, PDLIM5 long/short, and other spliceoforms. When comparing absolute protein proportions, we observe a partial reversion toward fetal gene usage in pathological hearts. In summary, we present a ratiometric catalog of paralogs and spliceoform pairs in the cardiac fetal gene program. More generally, the results demonstrate the potential of applying the proteome-wide ratio test concept to discover new regulatory modalities beyond differential gene expression.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2023

Tissue Usage Preference and Intrinsically Disordered Region Remodeling of Alternative Splicing Derived Proteoforms in the Heart

A computational analysis of mass spectrometry data was performed to uncover alternative splicing derived protein variants across chambers of the human heart. Evidence for 216 non-canonical isoforms was apparent in the atrium and the ventricle, including 52 isoforms not documented on SwissProt and recovered using an RNA sequencing derived database. Among non-canonical isoforms, 29 show signs of regulation based on statistically significant preferences in tissue usage, including a ventricular enriched protein isoform of tensin-1 (TNS1) and an atrium-enriched PDZ and LIM Domain 3 (PDLIM3) isoform 2 (PDLIM3-2/ALP-H). Examined variant regions that differ between alternative and canonical isoforms are highly enriched in intrinsically disordered regions, and over two-thirds of such regions are predicted to function in protein binding and/or RNA binding. The analysis here lends further credence to the notion that alternative splicing diversifies the proteome by rewiring intrinsically disordered regions, which are increasingly recognized to play important roles in the generation of biological function from protein sequences.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2023

Simultaneous proteome localization and turnover analysis reveals spatiotemporal dynamics of unfolded protein responses

The functions of proteins depend on their spatial and temporal distributions, which are not directly measured by static protein abundance. Under endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, the unfolded protein response (UPR) pathway remediates proteostasis in part by altering the turnover kinetics and spatial distribution of proteins. A global view of these spatiotemporal changes has yet to emerge and it is unknown how they affect different cellular compartments and pathways. Here we describe a mass spectrometry-based proteomics strategy and data analysis pipeline, termed Simultaneous Proteome Localization and Turnover (SPLAT), to measure concurrently the changes in protein turnover and subcellular distribution in the same experiment. Investigating two common UPR models of thapsigargin and tunicamycin challenge in human AC16 cells, we find that the changes in protein turnover kinetics during UPR varies across subcellular localizations, with overall slowdown but an acceleration in endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi proteins involved in stress response. In parallel, the spatial proteomics component of the experiment revealed an externalization of amino acid transporters and ion channels under UPR, as well as the migration of RNA-binding proteins toward an endosome co-sedimenting compartment. The SPLAT experimental design classifies heavy and light SILAC labeled proteins separately, allowing the observation of differential localization of new and old protein pools and capturing a partition of newly synthesized EGFR and ITGAV to the ER under stress that suggests protein trafficking disruptions. Finally, application of SPLAT toward human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CM) exposed to the cancer drug carfilzomib, identified a selective disruption of proteostasis in sarcomeric proteins as a potential mechanism of carfilzomib-mediated cardiotoxicity. Taken together, this study provides a global view into the spatiotemporal dynamics of human cardiac cells and demonstrates a method for inferring the coordinations between spatial and temporal proteome regulations in stress and drug response.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2022

Proteogenomic characterization of age and sex interactions in cardiac gene expression

The risks of heart diseases are significantly modulated by biological age and sex, but how these factors influence baseline cardiac gene expression remains incompletely understood. Here we characterized young adult and early aging mouse hearts using proteogenomics to identify age and sex dependent gene expression signatures in the mouse heart. RNA sequencing from 4 months old and 20 months old female and male C57BL/6J hearts identified thousands of genes with differential transcript abundances both between sexes (male vs. female) and across age groups (20 mo. vs. 4 mo.). Sex-associated cardiac genes are broadly distributed, functioning in the TCA cycle, mitochondrial translation, autophagy, and other processes. In addition, we found over 800 genes with differential aging response between male and female, which are enriched in calmodulin signaling and cell cycle regulations. Comparison with mass spectrometry data shows a cluster of metabolism genes with up-regulated transcripts but down-regulated protein levels in aging hearts, consistent with an uncoupling of transcriptional regulations in the genetic program with protein compositions. An analysis of sex-adjusted aging cardiac transcriptomes further revealed widespread remodeling of exon usage patterns that is largely independent from differential gene expression, concomitant with upstream changes in RNA-binding protein and splice factor transcripts. To evaluate the potential impact of the splicing events on proteoform composition in the heart, we applied an RNA-guided-proteomics computational pipeline to analyze the mass spectrometry data, and putatively identified hundreds of splice events with the potential to rewire the cardiac proteome through producing detectable splice isoform specific peptides. Taken together, this study contributes to emerging evidences for considerable sexual dimorphism in the cardiac aging process involving sex-biased aging genes and regulatory networks. Aging hearts are associated with a rewiring of RNA splicing programs, including sex- and age-dependent changes in exon usages and splice patterns that have the potential to influence cardiac protein structure and function. These changes represent an under-investigated aspect of cardiac aging that should be considered in the search for disease mechanisms.

physiology↗

bioRxiv2021

Transcriptome features of striated muscle aging and predictability of protein level changes

RNA and protein levels correlate only partially and some transcripts are better correlated with their protein counterparts than others. This suggests that in aging and disease studies, some transcriptomics markers may carry more information in predicting protein-level changes. Here we applied a computational data analysis workflow to predict which transcriptomic changes are more likely relevant to protein-level regulation in striated muscle aging. The protein predictability of each transcript is estimated from existing large proteogenomics data sets, then transferred to new total RNA sequencing data comparing skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle in young adult (~4 months) mice vs. early aging (~20 months) mice. Aging cardiac and skeletal muscles both invoke transcriptomic changes in innate immune system and mitochondria pathways but diverge in extracellular matrix processes. On an individual gene level, we identified 611 age-associated signatures in skeletal and cardiac muscles at 10% FDR, including a number of myokine and cardiokine encoding genes. We estimate that about 48% of the aging-associated transcripts may predict protein levels well (r [≥] 0.5). In parallel, a comparison of the identified aging-regulated genes with public human transcriptomics data showed that only 35-45% of the identified genes show an age-dependent expression in corresponding human tissues. Finally, integrating both RNA-protein correlation and human conservation across data sources, we nominate 134 prioritized aging striated muscle signature genes that are predicted to correlate strongly with protein levels and that show age-dependent expression in humans. These prioritized signatures may hold promise to understanding heart and skeletal muscle physiology in human and mouse aging.

physiology↗

bioRxiv2020

Proteomic signatures of acute oxidative stress response to paraquat in the mouse heart

The heart is sensitive to oxidative damage but a global view on how the cardiac proteome responds to oxidative stressors has yet to fully emerge. Using quantitative tandem mass spectrometry, we assessed the effects of acute exposure of the oxidative stress inducer paraquat on protein expression in mouse hearts. We observed widespread protein expression changes in the paraquat-exposed heart especially in organelle-containing subcellular fractions. During cardiac response to acute oxidative stress, proteome changes are consistent with a rapid reduction of mitochondrial metabolism, coupled with activation of multiple antioxidant proteins, reduction of protein synthesis and remediation of proteostasis. In addition to differential expression, we saw evidence of spatial reorganizations of the cardiac proteome including the translocation of hexokinase 2 to more soluble fractions. Treatment with the antioxidants Tempol and MitoTEMPO reversed many proteomic signatures of paraquat but this reversal was incomplete. We also identified a number of proteins with unknown function in the heart to be triggered by paraquat, suggesting they may have functions in oxidative stress response. Surprisingly, protein expression changes in the heart correlate poorly with those in the lung, consistent with differential sensitivity or stress response in these two organs. The results provide insights into oxidative stress responses in the heart and may avail the search for new therapeutic targets.

physiology↗

bioRxiv2019

Dynamic chromatin targeting of BRD4 stimulates cardiac fibroblast activation

Small molecule inhibitors of the acetyl-histone binding protein BRD4 have been shown to block cardiac fibrosis in pre-clinical models of heart failure (HF). However, the mechanisms by which BRD4 promotes pathological myocardial fibrosis remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that BRD4 functions as an effector of TGF-{beta} signaling to stimulate conversion of quiescent cardiac fibroblasts into Periostin (Postn)-positive cells that express high levels of extracellular matrix. BRD4 undergoes stimulus-dependent, genome-wide redistribution in cardiac fibroblasts, becoming enriched on a subset of enhancers and super-enhancers, and leading to RNA polymerase II activation and expression of downstream target genes. Employing the SERTA domain-containing protein 4 (Sertad4) locus as a prototype, we demonstrate that dynamic chromatin targeting of BRD4 is controlled, in part, by p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase, and provide evidence of a novel function for Sertad4 in TGF-{beta}-mediated cardiac fibroblast activation. These findings define BRD4 as a central regulator of the pro-fibrotic cell state of cardiac fibroblasts, and establish a signaling circuit for epigenetic reprogramming in HF.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Identifying alternative splicing isoforms in the human proteome with small proteotranscriptomic databases

RNA sequencing has led to the discovery of many transcript isoforms created by alternative splicing, but the translational status and functional significance of most alternative splicing events remain unknown. Here we applied a splice junction-centric approach to survey the landscape of protein alternative isoform expression in the human proteome. We focused on alternative splice events where pairs of splice junctions corresponding to included and excluded exons with appreciable read counts are translated together into selective protein sequence databases. Using this approach, we constructed tissue-specific FASTA databases from ENCODE RNA sequencing data, then reanalyzed splice junction peptides in existing mass spectrometry datasets across 10 human tissues (heart, lung, liver, pancreas, ovary, testis, colon, prostate, adrenal gland, and esophagus). Our analysis reidentified 1,108 non-canonical isoforms annotated in SwissProt. We further found 253 novel splice junction peptides in 212 genes that are not documented in the comprehensive Uniprot TrEMBL or Ensembl RefSeq databases. On a proteome scale, non-canonical isoforms differ from canonical sequences preferentially at sequences with heightened protein disorder, suggesting a functional consequence of alternative splicing on the proteome is the regulation of intrinsically disordered regions. We further observed examples where isoform-specific regions intersect with important cardiac protein phosphorylation sites. Our results reveal previously unidentified protein isoforms and may avail efforts to elucidate the functions of splicing events and expand the pool of observable biomarkers in profiling studies. Acronyms and Abbreviations

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2018

Identifying high-priority proteins across the human diseasome using semantic similarity

Knowledge of \"popular proteins\" has been a focus of multiple Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) initiatives and can guide the development of proteomics assays targeting important disease pathways. We report here an updated method to identify prioritized protein lists from the research literature, and apply it to catalog lists of important proteins across multiple cell types, sub-anatomical regions, and disease phenotypes of interest. We provide a systematic collection of popular proteins across 10,129 human diseases as defined by the Disease Ontology, 10,642 disease phenotypes defined by Human Phenotype Ontology, and 2,370 cellular pathways defined by Pathway Ontology. This strategy allows instant retrieval of popular proteins across the human \"diseasome\", and further allows reverse queries from protein to disease, enabling functional analysis of experimental protein lists using bibliometric annotations.

bioinformatics↗