The growth and development of plant tissues is associated with an ordered succession of cellular processes that are reflected in the appearance and disappearance of proteins. The control of the kinetics of protein turnover is central to how plants can rapidly and specifically alter protein abundance and thus molecular function in response to environmental or developmental cues. However, the processes of turnover are largely hidden during periods of apparent steady-state protein abundance, and even when proteins accumulate it is unclear whether enhanced synthesis or decreased degradation is responsible. We have used a The growth and development of plant tissues is associated with an ordered succession of cellular processes that are dictated by the appearance and disappearance of proteins and the transcripts that encode them (1-4). The ratio of the synthesis and degradation rates of these molecules, whether they are in quasi-steady state or are rapidly changing in abundance, defines both the net turnover rate and the abundance of each (5). The control of the kinetics of these processes is central to how plants can rapidly alter specific protein abundance and thus molecular function to respond to environmental or developmental cues.Genome wide analysis of Arabidopsis mRNA turnover rates has confirmed that knowledge of transcript decay rates can provide insights into diverse biological processes (6). For example, the number of introns and sequence elements in the 3袌-untranslated region and subcellular localization of the encoded protein affect the turnover rate of transcripts in Arabidopsis (6). Analysis of plant proteome synthesis and degradation has lagged considerably from our understanding of these processes in the transcriptome.Many methods have been developed to measure protein turnover in other organisms. Some are direct measurements of endogenous proteins using isotope labeling methods including both radioactive and stable isotope labeling (5, 7-10), whereas others use stable or transient transgenic techniques and a range of tags and markers (11,12). The clearest advantage of isotope labeling approaches is that the tags are very subtle with little or no impact on cellular processes and allow the fully functional proteins being assessed to be produced and distributed within cells in a normal context. The advent of mass spectrometry as a key tool in proteomics has provided a means to use enrichment of the natural abundance of stable isotopes to provide mass rather than radio decay signals to track the synthesis of new proteins. The ratio between light and heavy isotopes and the degrees of enrichment provided by mass spectrometry provides a powerful means to measure synthesis and degradation rates of individual proteins (5, 13).Stable isotope labeling using individual amino acids (SILAC) 1 has proven highly successful in mammalian cell culture systems (14). SILAC has also been used to measure protein turnover in yeast but required the use of auxotrophic mutants (5). However, N-methyl-N-(tert-butyldimethylsilyl...