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Updated: May 12, 2025

Spatial Profiling of Protein and RNA Expression in Tissue: An Approach to Fine-Tune Virtual Microdissection
Published on: July 6, 2022
All-at-once spatial proteome profiling of complex tissue context with single-cell-type resolution by proximity
Yiheng Mao1, Yuan Li1, Zhendong Zheng1
1Department of Chemistry and Research Center for Chemical Biology and Omics Analysis, College of Science, Guangming Advanced Research Institute, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
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Spatial proteomics enables in-depth mapping of tissue architectures, mostly achieved by laser microdissection-mass spectrometry (LMD-MS) and antibody-based imaging. However, trade-offs among sampling precision, throughput, and proteome coverage still limit the applicability of these strategies. Here, we propose proximity labeling for spatial proteomics (PSPro) by combining precise antibody-targeted biotinylation and efficient affinity purification for all-at-once cell-type proteome capture with sub-micrometer resolution from single tissue slice. With fine-tuned labeling parameters, PSPro shows reliable performance in benchmarking against flow cytometry- and LMD-based proteomic workflows. We apply PSPro to tumor and spleen slices, enriching thousands of proteins containing known markers from ten cell types. We further incorporate LMD into PSPro to facilitate comparison of cell subpopulations from the same tissue slice, revealing spatial proteome heterogeneity of cancer cells and immune cells in pancreatic tumor. Collectively, PSPro converts the traditional "antibody-epitope" paradigm to an "antibody-cell-type proteome" for spatial biology in a user-friendly manner. A record of this paper's transparent peer review process is included in the supplemental information.
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