New Method for Tracking Cell-Signaling Uses Amino Acids

Researchers have developed a new method to identify the cell of origin of intracellular and secreted proteins within multicellular environments.

According to researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the technique, known for the specific labeling using amino acid precursors, exploits the inability of vertebrate cells to synthesize essential amino acids that are normally required for growth and homeostasis.

This technological advance will provide investigators with a new toll that can help to create comprehensive mapping of cell-cell communication, which is essential in all aspects of cancer development, maintenance and response to therapy, according to background information from the study.

Researchers engineered cells to express amino acid biosynthesis enzymes, which enabled cells to grow on their own supply of amino acids produced from supplemented precursors.

The team also showed that supplementing heavy stable isotopelabeled forms of these precursors led to incorporation of heavy amino acids into proteins that produced enzyme expressing cells. And with the quantitative mass spectrometry to search for proteins that contained these stable isotope labels, researchers said they were able to determine the cell origin of both intracellular and secreted proteins identified in multicellular culture.

Providing a means to link proteins directly to specific cells allowed the authors to believe that this new method will be useful in the studies of cell-cell communication and biomarker discovery. 

More information regarding the findings of the study can be found in the journal Nature Methods.