milk-derived extracellular vesicles UHPLC-MS

Breast milk contains macromolecular components with distinctive functions, whereby milk fat globules and casein micelles provide nutrition, while whey contains molecules that stimulate the infant’s immunity. Interestingly, the importance and function of extracellular vesicles (EV) in milk has not been addressed in detail. This in part is due to the difficulty to purify EV from other milk components and consequently the molecular composition of human milk-derived EV has not been fully elucidated. Methods: In this study, an extensive LC-MS/MS proteomic analysis was performed on EV isolated via density-based separation from human breast milk of 7 individuals. The proteome of milk-derived EV was analyzed using FunRich and compared to the Vesiclepedia database, as well as to the whole milk proteome, which was constructed from 38 previously published milk proteomics studies.母乳含有具备独特功能的大分子组分：其中乳脂肪球与酪蛋白胶束负责提供营养，而乳清组分则包含可促进婴儿免疫功能的分子。值得注意的是，母乳中细胞外囊泡（extracellular vesicles, EV）的重要性与功能尚未得到详尽阐释。这在一定程度上是由于难以从母乳其他组分中纯化得到EV，因此母乳来源EV的分子组成尚未被完全阐明。 研究方法：本研究针对从7名供体的母乳中通过密度梯度分离法纯化得到的EV，开展了大规模液相色谱-串联质谱（Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry, LC-MS/MS）蛋白质组学分析。本研究使用FunRich软件对母乳来源EV的蛋白质组进行分析，并将其与Vesiclepedia数据库以及由38项已发表的母乳蛋白质组学研究数据整合构建的全乳蛋白质组进行比对。