Quantitative temporal phosphoproteomics of aging C.elegans under different environmental temperatures

Temperature is one of the primary environmental factors that affect aging, in which protein phosphorylation is an important regulator. Currently, the understanding of phosphorylation events in regulatory networks during aging has remained rather limited. Therefore, the phosphoproteomes of C.elegans of different age groups cultured at 20°C in natural aging process and 25°C in accelerated aging process were analyzed. Through using the iTRAQ-labeled phosphoproteomics method, 2375 phosphoproteins and 9063 phosphosites were identified. Volcano plots illustrated that 208 proteins during natural aging and 130 during accelerated aging, were significantly changed. Gene ontology and pathway analysis revealed that these proteins were mainly involved in temperature response, DNA transcription, protein translation, tissue system development and animal behavior processes. Moreover, our results uncovered those kinases CK2, MAPK and CAMK2 might play important roles in aging regulation. In summary, our results provided a new insight into the complicated phosphor-regulatory network system during aging and an important resource for future studies of protein phosphorylation in worms.