Eye proteome of Drosophila melanogaster

We report the proteome composition of the Drosophila eye – a compound organ that is highly enriched in membrane proteins. The fly eye is a popular model to study the physiology of vision by means of genetic, pharmacological, and dietary interference.While the eye transcriptome and development-related changes of gene expression profiles have been extensively studied, little is known about the eye proteome.we employed GeLC-MS/MS to identify and rank the abundances of 3516 eye proteins. Moreover, we applied our MS Western method to determine the absolute (molar) abundances of a related set of proteins that are important for photoreceptor structure (including maintenance) and function (phototransduction). Altogether, we provide a comprehensive and expandable proteomics resource that will be valuable for a variety of studies of ocular biochemistry, physiology, and development.