Global Subcellular Characterization of Protein Degradation Using Quantitative Proteomics

Protein degradation provides an important regulatory mechanism used to control cell cycle progression and many other cellular pathways. To comprehensively analyze the spatial control of protein degradation in U2OS osteosarcoma cells, we have combined drug treatment and SILAC-based quantitative mass spectrometry with subcellular and protein fractionation. The resulting data set analyzed more than 74,000 peptides, corresponding to ∼5000 proteins, from nuclear, cytosolic, membrane, and cytoskeletal compartments. These data identified rapidly degraded proteasome targets, such as PRR11 and highlighted a feedback mechanism resulting in translation inhibition, induced by blocking the proteasome. We show this is mediated by activation of the unfolded protein response. We observed compartment-specific differences in protein degradation, including proteins that would not have been characterized as rapidly degraded through analysis of whole cell lysates. Bioinformatic analysis of the entire data set is presented in the Encyclopedia of Proteome Dynamics, a web-based resource, with proteins annotated for stability and subcellular distribution.Targeted protein degradation is an important regulatory mechanism that allows co-ordination of cellular pathways in response to environmental and temporal stimuli (1). The control of diverse biochemical pathways, including cell cycle progression and the response to DNA damage, is mediated, at least in part, by dynamic alterations in protein degradation (2). Previous large scale proteomics studies in mammalian cells have shown that the rate of protein degradation can vary from the timescale of minutes, to essentially infinite stability for metastable proteins (3–8).Most intracellular proteins have similar degradation rates, with a half-life approximating the cell doubling rate. Under 5% of proteins display degradation rates more than threefold faster than the proteome average (3–5, 7). However, degradation rates for individual proteins can change, for example depending on either the cell cycle stage, or signaling events, and can also vary depending on subcellular localization. Disruption of such regulated protein stability underlies the disease mechanisms responsible for forms of cancer, e.g. p53 (9, 10) and the proto-oncogene c-Myc (11).Detection of rapidly degraded proteins can be difficult because of their low abundance. However, advances in mass spectrometry based proteomics have enabled in-depth quantitative analysis of cellular proteomes (12–14). Stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC)¹ (15), has been widely used to measure protein properties such as abundance, interactions, modifications, turnover, and subcellular localization under different conditions (16). Subcellular fractionation and protein size separation are also powerful techniques that enhance in-depth analysis of cellular proteomes. Not only do these fractionation techniques increase total proteome coverage, they also provide biological insight regarding how protein behavior differs between subcellular compartments. For example, subcellular fractionation has highlighted differences in the rate of ribosomal protein degradation between the nucleus and cytoplasm, (7, 17). Other studies have also demonstrated the benefit of in-depth subcellular fractionation and created methods for the characterization of how proteomes are localized in organelles (18–20).In this study we have used SILAC-based quantitative mass spectrometry combined with extensive subcellular and protein-level fractionation to identify rapidly degraded proteins in human U2OS cells. We provide a proteome level characterization of a major feedback mechanism involving inhibition of protein translation when the proteasome is inhibited. We also present the Encyclopedia of Proteome Dynamics, a user-friendly online resource providing access to the entire data set.