The differential hippocampal phosphoproteome of Apodemus sylvaticus paralleling spatial memory retrieval in the Barnes maze

Protein phosphorylation is a well-known and well-documented mechanism in memory processes. Although a large series of protein kinases involved in memory processes have been reported, information on phosphoproteins is limited. It was therefore the aim of the study to determine a partial and differential phosphoproteome along with the corresponding network in hippocampus of a wild caught mouse strain with excellent performance in several paradigms of spatial memory. Apodemus sylvaticus mice were trained in the Barnes maze, a non-invasive test system for spatial memory and untrained mice served as controls. Animals were sacrificed 6h following memory retrieval, hippocampi were taken, proteins extracted and in-solution digestion was carried out with subsequent iTRAQ double labelling. Phosphopeptides were enriched by a TiO2-based method and semi-quantified using two fragmentation principles on the LTQ-orbitrap Velos. In hippocampi of trained animals phosphopeptide levels representing signalling, neuronal, synaptosomal, cytoskeletal and metabolism proteins were at least twofold reduced or increased. Furthermore, a network revealing a link to pathways of ubiquitination, the androgen receptor, small GTPase Rab5 and MAPK signaling as well as synucleins was constructed. This work is relevant for interpretation of previous work and the design of future studies on protein phosphorylation in spatial memory.