Spatial Proteomic Approach to Characterize Skeletal Muscle Myofibers

Skeletal muscle myofibers have differential protein expression resulting in functionally distinct slow- and fast-twitch types. While certain protein classes are well-characterized, the depth of all proteins involved in this process is unknown. We utilized the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) and the HPASubC tool to classify mosaic expression patterns of staining across 49,600 unique tissue microarray (TMA) images using a visual proteomic approach. We identified 2164 proteins with potential mosaic expression, of which 1605 were categorized as “likely” or “real.” This list included both well-known fiber-type-specific and novel proteins. A comparison of the 1605 mosaic proteins with a mass spectrometry (MS)-derived proteomic dataset of single human muscle fibers led to the assignment of 111 proteins to fiber types. We additionally used a multiplexed immunohistochemistry approach, a multiplexed RNA-ISH approach, and STRING v11 to further assign or suggest fiber types of newly characterized mosaic proteins. This visual proteomic analysis of mature skeletal muscle myofibers greatly expands the known repertoire of twitch-type-specific proteins.