Discovery of potential candidate proteins reprogramming spinal cord derived astrocytes into neurons by proteomic analysis

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a common but devastating trauma of the central nerve system. In this study, we reprogrammed cultured spinal-cord reactive astrocytes into neurons by Neurod1 expression. The mechanism of programmed conversion from astrocytes to neurons has not been clarified yet. Thus, we used label-free proteomics to identify differentially expressed proteins in Neurod1 over-expressed astrocytes and control group. A total of 1952 proteins were identified, including 92 significantly changed proteins. Among these proteins, 8 proteins were identified as candidates involving in the process of the reprogramming, based on their biological function and fold change in the bioinformatic analysis. Our study revealed that that Neurod1 can directly reprogram cultured spinal-cord reactive astrocytes into neurons, and several proteins that could play a significant role during the neuronal reprogramming were discovered.