A Multiregional Proteomic Survey of the Postnatal Human Brain

Detailed observations of transcriptional, translational, and post-translational events in the human brain are essential to improving our understanding of its development, function, and vulnerability to disease. Here, we exploited label-free quantitative tandem mass-spectrometry proteomics to create an in-depth proteomic survey of adult human brain regions. Integration of protein data with existing whole-transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) from the BrainSpan project revealed varied patterns of protein:RNA relationships with generally increased magnitudes of protein abundance differences between brain regions compared to RNA. Many of the differences amplified in protein data were reflective of cyto-architectural and functional variation between brain regions. Comparing structurally similar cortical regions revealed significant differences in the abundance of receptor-associated and resident plasma membrane proteins that were not readily observed in the RNA expression data.