The Protein Profile of the Human Immature T-cell Line CCRF-CEM

Abstract

The human immature T-cell line CCRF-CEM is widely used for all kinds of in vitro studies in biochemistry, biology, toxicology and medicine. Knowledge about protein expression is limited and no comprehensive study on the proteome of this cell type has been reported to date. Proteomics technologies were applied in order to analyse the proteins of the CEM cell line. The proteins were separated by two-dimensional (2-D) gel electrophoresis and analysed by MALDI-MS and MALDI-MS-MS following in-gel digestion with trypsin and, finally, protein identification was carried out by peptide mass fingerprint (PMF) and post source decay (PSD), respectively. Approximately 4,500 spots, excised from four 2-D gels, were analysed. The analysis resulted in the identification of about 1,150 proteins, the products of 451 different genes. The majority of the identified proteins were enzymes, regulatory proteins and transporters, while leukocyte markers and oncogenes were also included. The CCRF-CEM cell database today represents one of the largest 2-D databases for eukaryotic proteomes, forming the basis for future expressional studies at the protein level.