Proteome-wide quantification of protein turnover in frog and fly embryos reveals divergent strategies of maternal inheritance
- 1Princeton University
Abstract
Every embryo inherits a maternal proteome that it must remodel with zygotic proteins to build its many cell types. The fate of the maternal proteome remains contested because indirect measurements cannot resolve it. Here, we combine 18O-water labeling with multiplexed proteomics to quantify protein turnover proteome-wide in frog and fly embryos. Through hatching, the frog preserves the bulk of its maternal proteome, confining rapid degradation to a small regulatory module. The fly cannot meet its synthesis demand from yolk alone and instead degrades nearly all maternal proteins, including housekeeping proteins long assumed stable, recycling them into new protein. Yet the turnover hierarchy is conserved, with disordered and regulatory proteins degrading fastest, while the fly rescales the whole proteome ~eightfold faster. These results recast the developmental proteome as both informational inheritance and metabolic reserve, establish 18O-water labeling as a turnover method for non-feeding organisms, and provide a resource of embryonic half-lives.
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BibTeX
@misc{cruz2026proteomewide,
title = {{Proteome-wide quantification of protein turnover in frog and fly embryos reveals divergent strategies of maternal inheritance}},
author = {E. R. Cruz and A. Marishta and G. Bao and A. N. T. Johnson and F. C. Keber and V. Pujari and D. Ivanov and M. Neinast and M. W. Kirschner and J. D. Rabinowitz and E. F. Wieschaus and M. Wuhr},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.28.754234},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.754234v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Proteome-wide quantification of protein turnover in frog and fly embryos reveals divergent strategies of maternal inheritance
AU - E. R. Cruz
AU - A. Marishta
AU - G. Bao
AU - A. N. T. Johnson
AU - F. C. Keber
AU - V. Pujari
AU - D. Ivanov
AU - M. Neinast
AU - M. W. Kirschner
AU - J. D. Rabinowitz
AU - E. F. Wieschaus
AU - M. Wuhr
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.28.754234
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.754234v1
AB - Every embryo inherits a maternal proteome that it must remodel with zygotic proteins to build its many cell types. The fate of the maternal proteome remains contested because indirect measurements cannot resolve it. Here, we combine 18O-water labeling with multiplexed proteomics to quantify protein turnover proteome-wide in frog and fly embryos. Through hatching, the frog preserves the bulk of its maternal proteome, confining rapid degradation to a small regulatory module. The fly cannot meet its synthesis demand from yolk alone and instead degrades nearly all maternal proteins, including housekeeping proteins long assumed stable, recycling them into new protein. Yet the turnover hierarchy is conserved, with disordered and regulatory proteins degrading fastest, while the fly rescales the whole proteome ~eightfold faster. These results recast the developmental proteome as both informational inheritance and metabolic reserve, establish 18O-water labeling as a turnover method for non-feeding organisms, and provide a resource of embryonic half-lives.
ER -