Analysis of the rat hypothalamus proteome by data independent label-free liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

Studies of neuronal, endocrine and metabolic disorders would be facilitated by characterization of the hypothalamus proteome. Protein extracts prepared from 16 whole rat hypothalami were measured by data independent label-free nanoflow liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (nLC-MSE). Peptide features were detected, aligned and searched against a rat SwissProt database using ProteinLynx Global Server v.2.5. The final combined dataset comprised 21,455 peptides, corresponding to 622 unique proteins, each identified by a minimum of two distinct peptides. The majority of the proteins (69%) were cytosolic, and 16% were membrane proteins. Important proteins involved in neurological and synaptic function were identified including several members of RAB family and proteins involved in glutamate biosynthesis.