Advanced fiber type-specific protein profiles derived from adult murine skeletal muscle

Abstract

Skeletal muscle is a heterogeneous tissue consisting of blood vessels, connective tissue, and muscle fibers. The last are highly adaptive and can change their molecular composition depending on external and internal factors, such as exercise, age, and disease. Thus, examination of the skeletal muscles at the fiber type level is essential to detect potential alterations. Therefore, we established a protocol in which myosin heavy chain isoform immunolabeled muscle fibers were laser microdissected and separately investigated by mass spectrometry to develop advanced proteomic profiles of all murine skeletal muscle fiber types. All data are available via ProteomeXchange with the identifier PXD025359. Our in-depth mass spectrometric analysis revealed unique fiber type protein profiles, confirming fiber type-specific metabolic properties and revealing a more versatile function of type IIx fibers. Furthermore, we found that multiple myopathy-associated proteins were enriched in type I and IIa fibers. To further optimize the assignment of fiber types based on the protein profile, we developed a hypothesis-free machine-learning approach, identified a discriminative peptide panel, and confirmed our panel using a public data set.