Protein expression profiling during wallerian degeneration in sensory and motor nerve in rat

Objective Isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) and online two-dimensional liquid chromatographytandem mass spectrometry (2D LC-MS/MS) were performed to identify differentially expressed proteins in sensory and motor nerves at 7 days after transaction. Methods Forty adult male wistar rats weighing 220-250 g were randomly divided into control group and experimental group (n=20 each group). Spinal cord transaction was performed to rats in experimental group. Seven days later, samples of normal/injured ventral root nerve and dorsal root nerve were obtained and labeled using iTRAQ (114, 115, 116, 117 were used for labeling normal motor nerve, injured motor nerve, normal sensory nerve, injured motor nerve respectively), and analyzed by 2DLC-MS/MS. Results A total of 4 312 proteins were identified. 1)There were 637 differentially expressed proteins in the injured motor nerve compared to the normal motor nerve, in which 265 were up-regulated and 372 were down-regulated. 2)There were 626 differentially expressed proteins in the injured sensory nerve compared to the normal sensory nerve, in which 258 were upregulated and 368 were down-regulated proteins. Conclusion We screen out differentially expressed proteins in sensory and motor nerve in the process of Wallerian degeneration, and this may contribute to the research in peripheral nerve regeneration.