Dynamic proteomics in mammalian cells: capabilities and challenges

Abstract

A long term goal for molecular biologists is to visualize and quantify the levels and localizations of all proteins at the single cell level under endogenous regulation throughout time. Recent advances in protein tagging, microscopy, and image analysis have brought this goal much closer. But how to integrate these techniques to arrive at proteome scale results? Here I review one approach, incorporating random endogenous gene tagging, high-throughput incubated time-lapse microscopy, and automated image analysis, that can provide information on, for example, the accumulation rates of proteins throughout the cell cycle and the variability of protein level expression. Dynamic proteomics has the potential to shed light on many long standing questions and could contribute to challenging undertakings such as following signal transduction in a mammalian cell from input to output.