System-wide analysis of multiple biomolecules is crucial to gain functional and mechanistic insights into biological processes. Hereby, an extensive protocol is described for high throughput extraction of lipids, metabolites, proteins and starch from a single sample harvested from synchronized Chlamydomonas culture.
Microalgae have been the focus of research for their applications in the production of high value compounds, food and fuel. Moreover, they are valuable photosynthetic models facilitating the understanding of the basic cellular processes. System wide studies enable comprehensive and in-depth understanding of molecular functions of the organisms. However, multiple independent samples and protocols are required for proteomics, lipidomics and metabolomics studies introducing higher error and variability. A robust high throughput extraction method for the simultaneous extraction of chlorophyll, lipids, metabolites, proteins and starch from a single sample of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is presented here. The illustrated experimental setup is for Chlamydomonas cultures synchronized using 12 h/12 h light/dark conditions. Samples were collected over a 24 h cell cycle to demonstrate that the metabolites, lipids and starch data obtained using various analytical platforms are well conformed. Furthermore, protein samples collected using the same extraction protocol were used to conduct detailed proteomics analysis to evaluate their quality and reproducibility. Based on the data, it can be inferred that the illustrated method provides a robust and reproducible approach to advance understanding of various biochemical pathways and their functions with greater confidence for both basic and applied research.
Microalgae are a rich source of natural products (e.g., fuels, human and animal nutrition, cosmetics and pharmacological substances). Numerous research efforts are carried out to enhance the efficiency of the production of high value products from microalgae1,2,3,4. Systems-level understanding of metabolism is a pre-requisite to improve the quality and the yield of natural products5,6,7. With the advent of functional genomic techniques and improved mass spectrometry methods, thousands of genes, transcripts, proteins, and metabolites can be monitored simultaneously. However, multiple samples are required for in-depth proteomics, lipidomics and metabolomics studies, which is often difficult to achieve in unicellular organisms, especially if time course studies are to be performed. Moreover, collection and processing of different sample aliquots in combination with different protocols to collect the highly complex omics data (i.e., proteomic, lipidomic, and metabolomics) introduces variability, thus making the integration of data a challenging task.
Chlamydomonas provides not only an excellent microbial system for the investigation of cellular processes, but also a convenient model to study the coordination of cell cycle and metabolism. Accordingly, a strong coordination of the transcripts expression with cell cycle has been shown using high resolution transcriptome profiling of synchronized culture of Chlamydomonas8. About 80% of the analyzed transcripts exhibited robust periodicity over a 24 h cell cycle8. Likewise, dry weight, proteins, chlorophyll, amino acids and fatty acids of two different strains of Chlamydomonas were shown to correlate with cell division in a study where sampling was performed every 4 h9. Recently, it was reported that the metabolite and lipid dynamics of the cell shift based on specific phases of the cell cycle10. The subtle changes in different biomolecules were possible to monitor using a robust methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE): methanol: water-based extraction method, which offers an ideal starting point for comprehensive multi-omics analysis10,11.
The presented protocol guides through a reproducible and efficient strategy10, for the simultaneous extraction of lipids, metabolites, proteins and starch from a single sample aliquot, for the time resolved metabolomic and lipidomic study of synchronous growing Chlamydomonas cultures. In addition to illustrating the robust and reproducible metabolic and lipidomic data10, here, the quality of the proteomic samples obtained from the same pellet is also demonstrated.
1. Pre-cultures of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
2. Synchronization of Chlamydomonas liquid cultures in fermenters
NOTE: The parameters presented in this protocol, such as temperature, light and CO2, are specific to synchronization of the strain CC-1690 mt+. In order to develop a synchronized culture using another strain, it is necessary to test the optimal conditions.
3. Harvesting Chlamydomonas cells
4. Preparation of extraction buffers and extraction chlorophyll, lipids and metabolites
CAUTION: Methanol (MeOH) and MTBE are flammable and can cause irritation of respiratory tract, eye or skin on prolonged exposure and/or contact. Please handle them carefully only in a fume hood and use the appropriate safety procedures during the extraction (lab coat, safety glasses, gloves, etc.).
5. Extraction of chlorophyll, lipids and metabolites
6. Aliquoting the fractions
7. Determination of polar metabolites (primary metabolites)
8. Determination of non-polar metabolites (Lipids)
9. Determination of chlorophyll content
10. Extraction and determination of the protein content, digestion and analysis
NOTE: To resuspend the protein, pellet urea/thiourea buffer (6 M urea, 2 M thioureaand protease and phosphatase inhibitors) was used with modifications in the protocol previously described16. However, any buffer of choice can be used for resuspension of proteins.
11. Extraction and determination of starch content
NOTE: For determination of total protein and starch content, the solid pellet was extracted in a two-step procedure as described previously10.
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii CC-1690 culture synchronization
To demonstrate the representative results for the given protocol, we present the example multi-omics data obtained after harvesting and extraction of samples from synchronized Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cultures10. Synchronized cultures of Chlamydomonas comprise of cells belonging to uniform growth phase at a specific time point. The Chlamydomonas cultures were synchronized at 12 h/12 h light/dark cycle, 34 °C with the light intensity of 200 µmol·m-2·s-1 and the CO2 concentration of2%, v/v, described as optimal concentration for strain CC-1690 mt+10. These conditions had been previously optimized and validated using various cell cycle parameters10. Figure 1 displays cell size distribution measured with Coulter Counter at distinct time points of synchronized cultures. A shift in the cell volume can be observed as the cells grow in size throughout light phase, followed by the release of daughter cells starting at the end of light phase from 10 h. Once all the daughter cells are released, shift in the cell volume can be observed as the newly released daughter cells are disposed to begin the next cycle 10 (Figure 1).
Sample-harvesting, -handling and -extraction
Rapid harvesting of samples is carried out using centrifugation and after discarding the supernatant, the pellets can be stored at -80 °C until extraction. As described above (step 5), MTBE extraction results in three distinct phases: a) organic phase was used to measure lipids as well as chlorophyll levels (normalization factor), b) polar phase was collected to measure metabolites on GCMS while, c) the pellet was used to measure starch content and proteins. An overview of the distribution of different phases and their employment is illustrated in Figure 2.
Polar and non-polar metabolites
Based on the GCMS analysis of the polar fraction, 65 metabolites were annotated, covering amino acids, nucleic acids, intermediates of glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, tricarboxylic acid cycle, pentose phosphate pathway and polyamines (Figure 3A). The LCMS analysis of neutral phase containing lipids led to the identification of 204 distinct lipid species covering various lipid classes namely phosphatidylglycerols, phosphatidylethanolamine, sulfoquinovosyl diacylglycerols, monogalactosyldiacylglycerols, digalactosyldiacylglycerols, diacylglyceryltrimethylhomoserine, fatty acids, diacylglycerides and triacylglycerides. To visualize the global shifts in the metabolites and lipids across cell cycle, principal component analysis (PCA) was used. The PCA displays a separation of light and dark phases for both metabolomics and lipidomic data. Moreover, a semi-cyclic (partially open circle) can be noticed for both data (Figure 3C,D). The partial gap in the circular pattern is attributed to the fact that the samples at 24 h of the cell cycle were collected under dark in contrast to the samples collected in the beginning of cell cycle after 0.25 h of exposure to the light (Figure 3C,D).
Protein and starch analysis
To examine the quality of the protein pellet obtained as a result of MTBE extraction, 6 samples were used for proteomic analysis. The quality of the proteomics data obtained by digesting 50 µg protein/sample, was examined using a computational quality control tool -Proteomics quality control (PTXQC)19, indicating reproducible and high quality of proteomics data obtained from all replicates (Supplementary Figure 1). The molecular functional coverage of proteins was examined using REVIGO20. An overview of functional enrichment of the 2463 identified proteins (see Table 2), is presented in Figure 4A. The remaining pellet after protein extraction was used for reproducible quantification of starch as indicated by low standard deviation among various replicates (Figure 4B).
Figure 1: Illustrative example of the changes in the cell volume across different phases of cell cycle in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The x-axis representing the cell volume while y-axis representing the cell number. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 2: Illustrated workflow for the employment of different phases during multi-omics extraction cell pellets. The figure has been reused from Juppner, J.et al.10. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 3: Representative example of metabolites and lipids identified using the described protocol. (A) Metabolite classes identified by GCMS analysis. (B) Lipid species belonging to different classes identified by LCMS analysis. (C) Principle component analysis of the metabolite levels across 24 h cell cycle. (D) Principle component analysis of the lipids across 24 h cell cycle. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 4: Representative example of the protein and starch data. A) Molecular functional enrichment of the proteins identified using LCMS analysis, treemap drawn using REVIGO 20 B) representative starch data displaying the reproducibility of the protocol. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Supplementary Figure 1: Customized design of the fermenter system for the temperature and aeration controlled synchronous growth of Chlamydomonas cultures. The figure has been reused from Juppner, J.et al.10. Please click here to download this file.
Supplementary Figure 2: Representative outcome for proteomics data quality. Heatmap plotted using computational PTXQC tool19. Please click here to download this file.
Time (min) | % Buffer B to Buffer A | |
0 to 15 min | Linear gradient from 0 to3% | Buffer A: 0.1% formic acid in UPLC grade water |
15 to 75 min | Linear gradient from 3% to 30% | Buffer B: 0.1% formic acid in 60% UPLC grade acetonitrile |
75 to 90 min | Linear gradient from 30% to 40% | Flow rate 300 nL/min |
90 to 94 min | Linear gradient from 40% to 90% | Injection volume 4 µL |
94 to104 min | wash column with 90% | |
105 to 120 min | Equilibrate the column for 15 min at 3% |
Table 1: Liquid chromatography of peptide samples, gradient parameters.
Table 2: List of proteins identified after LCMS/MS analysis. Please click here to download this file.
In this article, we illustrated a robust and highly applicable extraction protocol for comprehensive lipidomics, metabolomics, starch and proteomics analysis from a single pellet of 10-15 x 106 cells. The method has been successfully implemented in several studies for a wide range of cells and tissues10,14,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36. Here, we presented a stepwise pipeline for multi-omics analysis of different biomolecules from a single sample harvested from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (CC-1690 mt+) culture.
The protocol provides a robust and reproducible approach to process multiple samples at once, for the analysis of various biomolecules. However, a number of critical steps should be taken care off in order to minimize the technical variation. Firstly, harvesting of the cells should be done as swiftly as possible while maintaining the uniform conditions for all harvested samples to preserve the biological state of the cells. Though we used centrifugation to harvest the cells, alternate harvesting strategies can be used for harvesting of the samples. However, it is important to note that different harvesting strategies are known to influence the metabolic state of the cells37 hence, consistent harvesting approach must be used for all experimental samples. Secondly, it is important to avoid drying of the upper non-polar phase containing chlorophyll, since this can influence the levels of dissolved chlorophyll in the solvent affecting the normalization factor for the samples. Finally, care should be taken while removing the remaining polar phase to obtain the protein and starch pellet, to avoid disturbing the pellet which can influence the starch and protein content.
Thereby presented extraction protocol offers several benefits for multiple-omics data analysis. Besides minimizing the number of sample aliquots required, it also reduces the variation between the analytical results obtained for different biomolecules. This allows direct comparison of the results obtained from the primary metabolites, lipids and proteomic data. Similarly, the simultaneous extraction of multiple compound classes allows consistent and uniform normalization strategy of the different data sets. This is especially applicable if normalization is hard to achieve using dry or fresh weight38 or cell number.
The protocol can be implemented for routine screening of a complex biological sample. These holistic metabolomic, lipidomic and proteomic data sets can offer comprehensive information about systematic changes in the metabolism. Additionally, the data obtained from the proteomics analysis, provides insights into the quantitative (abundance) and qualitative (modifications) changes in proteins in relation to the metabolites. Hence, integrating omics data could reveal in-depth information about changes induced by genetic or biotic and/or abiotic perturbations of a biological system. Thus, elucidating molecular changes of specific metabolic pathways or cellular processes. Similarly, these high-throughput data can allow identification of targets for the metabolic engineering and refine or test predictions from genome-scale metabolic models37,39.
The authors have nothing to disclose.
We are very grateful to Gudrun Wolter and Änne Michaelis for excellent technical assistance. We would like to thank all the members of the Giavalisco lab for their help. We are thankful to the Max Planck Society for funding the research and FAPESP for the fellowship of L A Giraldi
Reagents and standards | |||
1,2-diheptadecanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (17:0 PC) | Avanti Polar Lipids | 850360P | Internal standard for lipids |
13C Sorbitol | Sigma Aldrich | 605514 | Internal standard for metabolites, ISOTEC® Stable Isotopes |
Ampicillin | Sigma Aldrich | A9393-5G | Internal standard for metabolites |
Corticosterone | Sigma Aldrich | 27840-500MG | Internal standard for metabolites, HPLC grade |
Methanol (MeOH) | Biosolve Chemicals | 13684102 | ULC-MS grade |
Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) | Biosolve Chemicals | 13890602 | HPLC grade |
Trypsin/Lys-C mix | Promega | V5072 | Enzymatic digestion of proteins |
Water | Biosolve Chemicals | 23214102 | ULC-MS grade |
Equipment | |||
1.5 ml Safe-lock microcentrifuge tubes | Eppendorf | 30120086 | Used for fractions |
2 ml Safe-lock microcentrifuge tubes | Eppendorf | 30120094 | Used for sample extarction |
Balance | Sartorius Corporation | 14 557 572 | |
Fermenter system | Glasbläserei Müller, Berlin, Germany | custom made fermenter of 800ml capacity | |
Q-exactive HF Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer | Thermo Scientific | IQLAAEGAAPFALGMBFZ | |
Refrigerated microcentrifuge | Eppendorf, model 5427R | 22620701 | |
Reversed Phase (RP) Bridged Ethyl Hybrid (BEH) C8 column (100 mm×2.1 mm containing 1.7 μm diameter particles) | Waters, Machester, UK | 186002878 | Analysis of lipids |
RP Charged Surface Hybrid (CSH) column (Waters) with an inner diameter of 75 μm and a particle size of 1.7 μm | Waters, Machester, UK | 186007477 | Analysis of proteins |
RP High Strength Silica (HSS) T3 column (100 mm×2.1 mm containing 1.8 μm diameter particles) | Waters, Machester, UK | 186003539 | Analysis of metabolites |
Shaker | Eppendorf Thermomixer 5436 | 2050-100-05 | |
Sonicator | USC 300 TH | 142-0084 | standard preset sonication power at 45kHz |
UPLC system | Waters Acquity UPLC system (Waters, Machester, UK) | ||
Vacuum concentrator | Scan Speed Maxi Vac Alpha Evaporators | 7.008.500.002 | |
Vortex mixer | Vortex-Genie 2, Model G560 | SI-0236 | |
Z2 Coulter Particle Count and Size Analyzer | Beckman Coulter | 6605700 | particle (cells) volume and number analyser |