Figure 1

Proteome analysis of the lesion center of the injured spinal cord. (A). The injured spinal cords were collected at day 1 (acute) and day 14 (subacute) after SCI. The lesion center (LC) with the length of 4-5 mm was dissected from the injured spinal cord tissues, and subjected to protein extraction for 2-DE. (B). Representative silver stained 2-DE gels show protein spots in the LC of the spinal cord derived from acute and subacute-SCI rats. Protein samples (200 μg) were loaded onto IPG strips (pH 3-10 Non-Linear) and then separated by a 10% SDS-PAGE gel. The gel was stained with silver stain and analyzed. Similar patterns of protein spots on the 2-DE were observed in six independent gels from three different sets of experiments. The spots on the gels were excised, trypsinized, and analyzed by MALDI-TOF-MS as described in Materials and Methods. Protein identification was obtained for 128 protein spots. There were 7 proteins which were biostatistically reduced in the LC at day 14. 12 proteins were found to be significantly upregulated in the LC at day 14 when compared to that detected at day 1 post SCI. Their protein identification and fold change in their expression levels were shown in Table 1 and 2.