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Eukaryotic Cell, December 2006, p. 1990-2000, Vol. 5, No. 12
1535-9778/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/EC.00195-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Leroi V. DeSouza,2,3,4,
Haresha Samaranayake,1
Ronald E. Pearlman,3,4
K. W. Michael Siu,2,3 and
Lawrence A. Klobutcher1*
Department of Molecular, Microbial and Structural Biology, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut 06032,1 Department of Chemistry,2 Centre for Research in Mass Spectrometry,3 Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P34
Received 20 June 2006/ Accepted 21 September 2006
In vertebrates, phagocytosis occurs mainly in specialized cells of the immune system and serves as a primary defense against invading pathogens, but it also plays a role in clearing apoptotic cells and in tissue remodeling during development. In contrast, unicellular eukaryotes, such as the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, employ phagocytosis to ingest and degrade other microorganisms to meet their nutritional needs. To learn more about the protein components of the multistep process of phagocytosis, we carried out an analysis of the Tetrahymena phagosome proteome. Tetrahymena cells were fed polystyrene beads, which allowed for the efficient purification of phagosomes. The protein composition of purified phagosomes was then analyzed by multidimensional separation coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. A total of 453 peptides were identified that resulted in the identification of 73 putative phagosome proteins. Twenty-eight of the proteins have been implicated in phagocytosis in other organisms, indicating that key aspects of phagocytosis were conserved during evolution. Other identified proteins have not previously been associated with phagocytosis, including some of unknown function. Live-cell confocal fluorescence imaging of Tetrahymena strains expressing green fluorescent protein-tagged versions of four of the identified phagosome proteins provided evidence that at least three of the proteins (including two with unknown functions) are associated with phagosomes, indicating that the bulk of the proteins identified in the analyses are indeed phagosome associated.
Published ahead of print on 29 September 2006.
M.E.J. and L.V.D. contributed equally to this work.
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