Cell Proteomic Footprint

Abstract

The authentication of mammalian cell cultures and their subpopulations are of tremendous demand in biotechnology and cell therapy. However, current techniques are either not efficient or can be very complex and expensive. Here we report a simple and straightforward approach for authentication of biological cells and their subpopulations with high speed, high throughput, low sample cost, and high sensitivity. We discovered that cell cultures treated with protease at soft, “non-killing” conditions release fragments of cell surface proteins, which composition is a strong characteristic of the cells. Mass spectrometric analysis of the released fragments allows a direct comparison of the produced mass spectrum with the mass spectrum of known cells. As an example, we applied this technique to verify subpopulations of human fibroblasts which have different origins and exhibit different medical characteristics.