It’s 2019….and I’m shocked that this even needs to be said to anyone, but it does. I know it doesn’t have to be said to the brilliant people who, for some reason, come to this blog to read my rambling about proteomics, but — hey — maybe my annoyed rambling here will actually be useful to someone!
Here we go:
Transcript abundance does not correlate with protein abundance.
I’m going to throw in proof that I filtered on one criteria — “does it say it in the title or abstract?” because the people you’re going to need to say this to probably aren’t reeeaaaal into reading. Heck, I’ll even highlight it.
#1 It can, if you go on a gene by gene basis (and organism by organism) and throw in adjustment factors.
#2 — Maybe this is a new finding? HINT: IT ISN’T!!!
In 2009, these authors suggest that you basically keep a list (it’s going to be small) of the proteins where RNA abundance and protein abundance correlate. THEN you can trust the mRNA levels to be helpful for predicting protein abundance.
#3) Who’s heard of these journals? Let’s look at a really thoughtful review in something called Call? Sell?
I’m not even trying, yo. For real. I did a SILAC experiment (the gold standard for protein quantification) and RNA Microarrays on the same samples way way way back in the day. 1% overlap. Yes — on an Orbitrap XL with SCX fractionation, I didn’t get close to complete proteome coverage. I was PUMPED by a few thousand with quan. And microarrays died out for a very good reason (or should have, if they haven’t).
1% overlap in quan. Yeah…my system was messed up…but, come one. You’d think by chance it would be better.
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