title: Rat brain neuropeptidomics: tissue collection, protease inhibition, neuropeptide extraction, and mass spectrometric analysis.
abstract: Due to the complexity of the mammalian central nervous system, neuropeptidomic studies in mammals often yield very complicated mass spectra that make data analysis difficult. Careful sample preparation and extraction protocols must be employed in order to minimize spectral complexity and enable extraction of useful information on neuropeptides from a given sample. Controlling post-mortem protease activity is essential to simplifying mass spectra and to identifying low-abundance neuropeptides in tissue samples. Post-mortem microwave-irradiation coupled with cryostat dissection has proven to be effective in arresting protease activity to allow detection of endogenous neuropeptides instead of protein degradation products.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Sturm
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Dowell
authors.forename: Lingjun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000378:metabolism; D001923:Brain Chemistry; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D009479:Neuropeptides / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics; D011480:Protease Inhibitors / Q000378:metabolism*; D040901:Proteomics / Q000379:methods*; D051381:Rats
chemical_list: D009479:Neuropeptides; D011480:Protease Inhibitors