Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) can differentiate into neural stem cells (NSCs), which can further be differentiated into neurons and glia cells. Therefore, these cells have huge potential as source for treatment of neurological diseases. Membrane-associated proteins are very important in cellular signaling and recognition, and their function and activity are frequently regulated by posttranslational modifications such as phosphorylation and glycosylation. To obtain information about membraneassociated proteins and their modified amino acids potentially involved in changes of hESCs and NSCs as well as to investigate potential new markers for these two cell stages, we performed large-scale quantitative membrane-proteomic of hESCs and NSCs. This approach employed membrane purification followed by peptide dimethyl labeling and peptide enrichment to study the membrane subproteome as well as changes in phosphorylation and sialylation between hESCs and NSCs. Combining proteomics and modification specific proteomics we identified a total of 5105 proteins whereof 57% contained transmembrane domains or signal peptides. The enrichment strategy yielded a total of 10,087 phosphorylated peptides in which 78% of phosphopeptides were identified with >99% confidence in site assignment and 1810 unique formerly sialylated N-linked glycopeptides. Several proteins were identified as significantly regulated in hESCs and NSC, including proteins involved in the early embryonic and neural development. In the latter group of proteins, we could identify potential NSC markers as
Pluripotent embryonic stem cell (ESC)1 -derived neural stem cells (NSCs) can differentiate into neurons and glia cells of the central nervous system (1), including specialized neuron types like dopaminergic, representing a potential source for treatment of neurological diseases, such as ParkinsonЈs disease. Therefore, a better understanding of the cellular processes behind the changes of hESCs into NSCs, including solid markers for each cell type, is fundamental to move forward with a successful regenerative cell therapy and to investigate the early human neurogenesis processes.Many markers have been reported for the two types of stem cells (2, 3), however several of these markers are also identified in other stem or progenitor cells such as CD133 (Prominin-1) (4). Discovery of cell surface specific markers for differentiated stem cells is highly relevant for future clinical applications. In particular being able to distinguish the developmental stages of the differentiation from parental stem cells to fully mature cells would allow a correct manipulation and isolation of the cell type of interest. Moreover, such study 1 The abbreviations used are: CID, collision-induced dissociation; FDR, false discovery rate; FLR, false localization rate; HCD, highenergy collision induced dissociation; hESC, human embryonic stem cell; LC-MS/MS, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry; MSA, multistage activation; NSC, neural stem cell; PTM, post-translational modificat...