Proteome of Human Scalp Hair Follicles

Proteomic analysis of hair follicles aids in the basic understanding of human scalp hair biology and can serve as a foundation for biomarker identification and targeted therapy in precision medicine. Proteomics of scalp hair follicles in the Indian population has not been reported previously. We performed Orbitrap mass spectrometry analysis of proteins extracted from plucked scalp hair follicles of five healthy, nonbalding donors. Proteins from hair follicles were resolved by SDS-PAGE, extracted, trypsin-digested, cleaned up using ZipTips, and purified on C18 reversed-phase Easy-columns for Orbitrap analysis. The Orbitrap mass spectrometry data were processed using Proteome Discoverer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA). The mass spectrometry proteomics data have been deposited in the ProteomeXchange Consortium via PRIDE, with the dataset identifier PXD034166. In this study, we identified 2,961 unique (nonredundant) proteins across all five samples and 190 proteins common to these samples. Ontology and pathway analyses were performed on the identified proteins. This study provides a well-annotated hair follicle proteomics repository of Indian scalp hair follicles.