SILAC Expands its Territory to the Pathogenic Yeast, Candida albicans

Quantitative proteomic analysis using stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture (SILAC), as metabolic labeling with MS, has been used as an excellent technique to measure relative abundance change in proteins and post-transitional modifications. Since its development in 2002, SILAC has proven to have unique and specific advantage compared to other labeling methods such as Isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) and Tandem Mass Tag (TMT). However, SILAC has limitations in its application to human tissue/organ samples and some types of unicellular organisms that convert supplemented heavy amino acids to others. In this issue, Kaneva etal. (Proteomics 2018, 18, 1700278) introduces a new application of SILAC to a pathogen, which allows quantitative proteomics analysis to be performed without the need of arginine auxotrophs for SILAC experiment. In fungal pathogens, such as Candida albicans and other yeast family, arginine metabolism is one of the factors that helps pathogen escape host's defenses. This prevents arginine auxotrophs from being used in C. albicans research and limits SILAC-based MS method as a choice of quantitation. However, possibilities for quantitative proteomic analysis of a pathogenic yeast C. albicans using SILAC has now opened by Kaneva etal.