Salivary Proteome Profile of Women during Fertile Phase of Menstrual Cycle as Characterized by Mass Spectrometry

Ganesan Saibaba; Durairaj Rajesh; Subramanian Muthukumar; Ganesan Sathiyanarayanan; Archunan Priya Aarthy; Govindaraju Archunan

doi:10.4103/GMIT.GMIT_78_20

Salivary Proteome Profile of Women during Fertile Phase of Menstrual Cycle as Characterized by Mass Spectrometry

Gynecol Minim Invasive Ther. 2021 Nov 5;10(4):226-234. doi: 10.4103/GMIT.GMIT_78_20. eCollection 2021 Oct-Dec.

Authors

Ganesan Saibaba^{1

2}, Durairaj Rajesh^{1

3}, Subramanian Muthukumar⁴, Ganesan Sathiyanarayanan⁵, Archunan Priya Aarthy⁶, Govindaraju Archunan¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Animal Science, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India.
² Department of Animal Science, Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center, Rishon LeTsiyon-7528809, Israel.
³ Department of Molecular Biology and Chemical Communication, Research Institute in Semiochemistry and Applied Ethology (IRSEA), 84400 Apt, France.
⁴ Department of Biotechnology, School of Chemical and Biotechnology (SCBT), SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁵ School of Life Sciences, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India.
⁶ Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Rabindra Nath Tagore Medical College, Udaipur- 313001, Rajasthan, India.

Abstract

Objectives: Ovulation is such a critical physiological process that its noninvasive detection based on salivary constituents has several advantages in humans. Hence, the present study is proposed to identify the ovulatory-specific proteins in saliva in order to detect ovulation phase.

Materials and methods: Samples were collected from women volunteers. The procedure adopted was approved by the Institutional Human Ethical Committee (DM/2014/101/38), Bharathidasan University. The saliva samples were collected from thirty healthy female volunteers, with a prior written consent. One-way analysis of variance was used to calculate protein concentration and band intensity using SPSS 16 software (SPSS Inc., Cary, NC, USA). The salivary protein expression pattern during different phases of menstrual cycle was analyzed using gel-based high resolution-liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight/time of flight. Further, bioinformatics tools were adopted to annotate the proteins identified at various phases of menstrual cycle.

Results: As many as 530 proteins showed up in the saliva during ovulatory phase, whereas there were only 251 proteins identified during postovulatory phase. The functional annotation of salivary proteins revealed that the proteins got assigned to the class of "extracellular proteins" which are concerned with regulatory functions. The 16 unique and/or differentially expressed protein spots appeared during ovulatory phase, among which Cystatin-S, Prolactin-inducible protein, Cystatin-A, Cystatin-SN, BPI fold-containing family A member 2, Alpha-tubulin N-acetyltransferase 1, Carbonic anhydrase-6, Protein LEG1 homolog, Hemoglobin subunit beta, and Pancreatic alpha-amylase were identified.

Conclusion: Total salivary proteome profile has been listed with respect to various phases of menstrual cycle. Among the protein listed, Cystatin-S offers a biomarker protein and/or indicator of ovulatory phase. However, extensive validation is required before arriving to a candidate bio-marker protein.

Keywords: Biomarker; cystatin; gel electrophoresis; liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry; ovulation; protein; saliva; sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.