Toward the proteome of the human peripheral blood eosinophil

Eosinophils (EOSs) are granular leukocytes that have significant roles in many inflammatory and immunoregulatory responses, especially asthma and allergic diseases. We have undertaken a fairly comprehensive proteomic analysis of purified peripheral blood EOSs from normal human donors primarily employing 2-DE with protein spot identification by MALDIMS. Protein subfractionation methods employed included IEF (Zoom® Fractionator) and subcellular fractionation using differential protein solubilization. We have identified 3141 proteins, which had Mascot expectation scores of 10^-3 or less. Of these 426 were unique and non-redundant of which 231 were novel proteins not previously reported to occur in EOSs. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis showed that some 70% of the non-redundant proteins could be subdivided into categories that are clearly related to currently known EOS biological activities. Cytoskeletal and associated proteins predominated among the proteins identified. Extensive protein posttranslational modifications were evident, many of which have not been previously reported that reflected the dynamic character of the EOS. This data set of eosinophilic proteins will prove valuable in comparative studies of disease versus normal states and for studies of gender differences and polymorphic variation among individuals.