Sub-chronic lead exposure alters kidney proteome profiles

The current study examined the impact of sub-chronic lead (Pb)-exposure upon global protein profile in rodent kidney (blood Pb levels ~50 μg/dL; 5 weeks oral Pb-acetate exposure). Utilizing 2D SDS-PAGE for kidney protein separation, greater than 500 protein spots were analyzed by densitometry following background noise removal, spot alignment, and intensity filtering. Approximately 100 protein spots were identified by ESI-MS/MS with mitochondrial, chaperone, antioxidant, and Pb-binding proteins included. Forty-eight protein spots exhibited significant alterations in abundance (18 identified by ESI-MS/MS) including the increased protein abundance of ketohexokinase, enolase, protein disulfide-isomerase, lamda crystallin, lactamase, and glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. Decreased protein abundances were observed for α-2 microglobulin, glutamate cysteine ligase, prohibitin, homogentisate 1,2-dioxygenase, alpha-ETF, argininosuccinate synthetase and ATP synthase (H+ transporting). These data support the hypothesis that protein profiles in the kidney are altered following sub-chronic physiologically relevant Pb-exposure.