Spectral comparisons of mammalian cells and intact organelles by solid-state NMR

Whole-cell protein profiling, spatial localization, and quantification of activities such as gene transcription and protein translation are possible with modern biochemical and biophysical techniques. Yet, addressing questions of overall compositional changes within a cell - capturing the relative amounts of protein and ribosomal RNA levels and lipid content simultaneously - would require extractions and purifications with caveats due to isolation yields and detection methods. A holistic view of cellular composition would aid in the study of cellular composition and function. Here, solid state NMR is used to identify ¹³C NMR signatures for cellular organelles in HeLa cells without the use of any isotopic labeling. Comparisons are made with carbon spectra of subcellular assemblies including DNA, lipids, ribosomes, nuclei and mitochondria. Whole-cell comparisons are made with different mammalian cells lines, with red blood cells that lack nuclei and organelles, and with Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Furthermore, treatment of mammalian cells with cycloheximide, a commonly used protein synthesis inhibitor, revealed unanticipated changes consistent with a significant increase in protein glycosylation, obvious at the whole cell level. Thus, we demonstrate that solid-state NMR serves as a unique analytical tool to catalog and compare the ratios of distinct carbon types in cells and serves as a discovery tool to reveal the workings of inhibitors such as cycloheximide on whole-cell biochemistry.