Proteomic Comparison of Damaged Sciatic Nerves of a Newt, Triturus karelinii (Amphibia: Urodela) During the First 24th Hour of Regeneration Period

Background: Regenerative capacity of urodele amphibians, in which they have through their lifetime, is unique among vertebrates. The regeneration period and the underlying mechanisms have become an important field with the technical developments in molecular biology research. Because of the structure of peripheral nerves, changes such as protein destruction, local protein synthesis and post-translational modifications occur independently from the cell body after the first few hours of peripheral nerve damage. All the changes during this period are based on proteom level, which makes detailed proteomics studies favorable for understanding the regeneration mechanism in peripheral nerves. Objective: The main purpose of this study is to determine the optimal experimental method for understanding the molecular mechanisms of neural regeneration period in newts. Method: A comparative study regarding regeneration period during the first 24 hours is executed in experimentally damaged sciatic nerve tissues of newts with crush or transection injuries using two dimensional electrophoresis and MALDITOF MS based bottom-up proteomic strategies. Results: Differences between expression levels and presence/ absence of protein spots of five groups were determined. Modifications on differerent protein spots between distal and proximal stumps of sciatic nerve were found by phosphoprotein and glycoprotein stainings. Conclusion: Expression level differences of certain spots and post-translational modifications may indicate important molecular mechanisms of regeneration period. This study demonstrated that analyzing distal and proximal nerve stumps separately gave complementary information as different stumps of transected nerves reveal unique response to damage and post-translational modifications aren’t masked.