Small-scale surface proteomic analysis of human extracellular vesicles

Characterization of cell surface proteome differences between cancer and healthy cells is a valuable approach for the identification of novel diagnostic and therapeutic targets. However, selective sampling of surface proteins for proteomics requires large samples (>10e6 cells) and long labeling times. These limitations preclude analysis of material-limited biological samples or the capture of rapid surface proteomic changes.

UCSF researchers present two labeling approaches to tether exogenous peroxidases (APEX2 and HRP) directly to cells, enabling rapid, small-scale cell surface biotinylation without the need to engineer cells. The researchers used a novel lipidated DNA-tethered APEX2 (DNA-APEX2), which upon addition to cells promoted cell agnostic membrane-proximal labeling. Alternatively, they employed horseradish peroxidase (HRP) fused to the glycan binding domain of wheat germ agglutinin (WGA-HRP). This approach yielded a rapid and commercially inexpensive means to directly label cells containing common N-Acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) and sialic acid glycans on their surface. The facile WGA-HRP method permitted high surface coverage of cellular samples and enabled the first comparative surface proteome characterization of cells and cell-derived small extracellular vesicles (EV), leading to the robust quantification of 953 cell and EV surface annotated proteins. The researchers identified a newly-recognized subset of EV-enriched markers, as well as proteins that are uniquely upregulated on Myc oncogene-transformed prostate cancer EVs. These two cell-tethered enzyme surface biotinylation approaches are highly advantageous for rapidly and directly labeling surface proteins across a range of material-limited sample types.