Determining composition of micron-scale protein deposits in neurodegenerative disease by spatially targeted optical microproteomics

In many neurodegenerative diseases – including Alzheimer’s disease – deposits of misfolded proteins form in the brain. While visible through a microscope, these deposits are too small to be isolated and extracted. In this article, researchers show how their new technique – spatially targeted microproteomics (STOMP) – makes use of tightly-focused laser light to attach chemical handles to these protein deposits, so that they can be recovered for identification and analysis. Through using STOMP, researchers have identified a number of proteins not previously associated with pathology in Alzheimer’s disease (including some proteins involved in signalling across synapses between neurons), and hope to see STOMP used to explore the underlying biology of other neurodegenerative diseases.