Deep proteomics of mouse skeletal muscle enables quantitation of protein isoforms, metabolic pathways, and transcription factors.

Skeletal muscle constitutes 40% of individual body mass and plays vital roles in locomotion and whole-body metabolism. Proteomics of skeletal muscle is challenging because of highly abundant contractile proteins that interfere with detection of regulatory proteins. Using a state-of-the art MS workflow and a strategy to map identifications from the C2C12 cell line model to tissues, we identified a total of 10,218 proteins, including skeletal muscle specific transcription factors like myod1 and myogenin and circadian clock proteins. We obtain absolute abundances for proteins expressed in a muscle cell line and skeletal muscle, which should serve as a valuable resource. Quantitation of protein isoforms of glucose uptake signaling pathways and in glucose and lipid metabolic pathways provides a detailed metabolic map of the cell line compared with tissue. This revealed unexpectedly complex regulation of AMP-activated protein kinase and insulin signaling in muscle tissue at the level of enzyme isoforms.