The cells in our bodies are made of millions of proteins, and the array of tasks these proteins undertake can seem almost limitless. Providing structural support, regulating material flow in and out of cells, and facilitating the production of other proteins are just some of the critical jobs they perform. Cells, though, are not just a bag of proteins. Various compartments — each with their own roles — exist within a human cell and each compartment houses its own unique subsets of proteins.
Historically, research aimed at understanding how proteins do their jobs has relied on measuring the overall quantity of specific proteins in the cell, but the question of where in the cell those proteins might be working has been largely overlooked. Now, though, researchers from the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco and their colleagues have demonstrated just how important location really is.
In a new study, published in the Feb. 20 print edition of Cell, CZ Biohub San Francisco researchers shared a uniquely comprehensive map of protein locations within human cells and, in a proof-of-principle experiment, showed that more than 600 proteins changed locations when cells were infected with a coronavirus. These changes helped researchers identify previously unknown actions cells were taking in response to a viral attack — actions that would have been missed entirely in experiments that looked at protein quantity alone.
In this video (also available on YouTube), CZ Biohub scientists Manuel Leonetti, Duo Peng, and Josh Elias discuss how they developed Organelle Profiling and explain how understanding protein localization can lead to insights into how to treat diseases. To learn more about the research, click here.