Capturing the in vivo molecular signature of the podocyte

The podocyte has an essential role in glomerular function. When cultured ex vivo, podocytes do not recapitulate their in vivo phenotype. Several technical barriers have prevented isolation of podocytes from animals with sufficient yield and purity to allow genome-wide assessment of their molecular fingerprint. Boerries et al. overcame some of these barriers and characterized the transcriptome and proteome of freshly isolated podocytes. These data sets and isolation protocol are valuable resources for the podocyte research community.