Visualisation of proteome-wide ordered protein abundances in Trypanosoma brucei

Abstract

Background: Trypanosoma brucei is a protozoan parasite and etiological agent of human and animal African trypanosomiasis. It has a complex life cycle, but the most studied cellular types are the in vitro cultivated bloodstream- and procyclic-forms. These correspond to the replicating, mammalian host bloodstream-dwelling, slender trypomastigotes and tsetse vector midgut-dwelling procyclic lifecycle stages, respectively. Several proteomics studies have reported the differential abundance of proteins between these in vitro cultivated cell types. However, there are no datasets providing protein abundance, from most to least abundant, within and between both cell types. Methods: We used MaxQuant software 1.6.10.4 to reprocess a recent large-scale proteomics experiment from our laboratory and extracted intensity-based quantifications of the bloodstream and procyclic form proteomes. Results: We created a web interface to visually explore protein abundances within and between the in vitro cultivated T. brucei bloodstream and procyclic form proteomes. Conclusions: The protein abundance visualization tool, searchable by protein name(s) and attribute(s), is likely to be useful to the trypanosome research community. It will allow users to contextualise their proteins of interest in terms of their abundances in the T. brucei bloodstream and procyclic form proteomes.