Worms from Venus and Mars: Proteomics Profiling of Sexual Differences in Caenorhabditis elegans Using in Vivo N-15 Isotope Labeling

Hermaphrodites of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans produce both sperm and oocytes in the same germline. To investigate the process underlying spermatogenesis and oogenesis separately, we used a quantitative proteomics approach applied to two mutant worm lines (fem-3(q20) and fem-1(hc17)) developing only male and female germlines, respectively. We used stable isotopic labeling of whole animals by feeding them either N-14 or N-15 labeled Escherichia coli. This way, we could confidently identify and quantify 1040 proteins in two independent experiments. Of these, similar to 400 proteins showed significant differential expression between female-like and male-like animals. As expected, proteins linked to oogenesis were found to be highly upregulated in the feminized worms, whereas proteins involved in spermatogenesis were found to be highly upregulated in the masculinized worms. This was complemented by many proteins strongly enriched in either mutant. Although the function of the majority of these proteins is unknown, their expression profile indicates that they have an as yet unrecognized role in the development and/or function of the female- and male germline in C. elegans. We show that members of several protein complexes as well as functionally similar proteins show comparable abundance ratios, indicating coregulation of protein expression. Additional analysis comparing our protein data to a previously published microarray data set shows that mRNA and protein expression are poorly correlating. We provide one of the first examples of a large-scale quantitative proteomics experiment in C. elegans and show the potential and feasibility of an approach enabling system-wide accurate quantitative proteomics experiments in this model organism.