Targeted proteomics methods for protein quantification of human cells, tissues and blood

The common concept in this thesis was to adapt and develop quantitative mass spectrometric assays focusing on reagents originating from the Human Protein Atlas project to quantify proteins in human cell lines, tissues and blood. The work is based around stable isotope labeled protein fragment standards that each represent a small part of a human protein-coding gene. This thesis shows how they can be used in various formats to describe the protein landscape and be used to standardize mass spectrometry experiments. The first part of the thesis describes the use of antibodies in combination with heavy stable isotope labeled antigens to establish a semi-automated protocol for protein quantification of complex samples with fast analysis time (Paper~I). Paper II introduces a semi-automated cloning protocol that can be used to selectively clone variants of recombinant proteins, and highlights the automation process that is necessary for large-scale proteomics endeavors. This paper also describes the technology that was used to clone all protein standards that are used in all of the included papers. The second part of the thesis includes papers that focus on the generation and application of antibody-free targeted mass spectrometry methods. Here, absolute protein copy numbers were determined across human cell lines and tissues (Paper III) and the protein data was correlated against transcriptomics data. Proteins were quantified to validate antibodies in a novel method that evaluates antibodies based on differential protein expression across multiple cell lines (Paper IV). Finally, a large-scale study was performed to generate targeted proteomics assays (Paper V) based on protein fragments. Here, assay coordinates were mapped for more than 10,000 human protein-coding genes and a subset of peptides was thereafter used to determine absolute protein levels of 49 proteins in human serum. In conclusion, this thesis describes the development of methods for protein quantification by targeted mass spectrometry and the use of recombinant protein fragment standards as the common denominator.QC 20161013