Proteomics for Shedding Studies: Current Useful Technologies

Abstract

Many membrane proteins undergo a proteolysis referred to as ectodomain shedding (shedding), by which their extracellular regions are released. Shedding is strictly regulated by signal transduction and other factors, and proteomics is a powerful approach to understand which substrates undergo shedding under specific conditions. In this review, we introduce three proteomics technologies useful for shedding studies: 1) a method for analyzing secreted proteins, based on the fact that many membrane proteins are glycosylated; 2) a method for specifically labeling and analyzing the N-termini of proteins on the cell surface; and 3) a highly sensitive method to isolate protein N- and C-terminal peptides currently developed by our group.