Matrisome changes in Parkinson’s disease

Extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, collectively known as the matrisome, include collagens, glycoproteins, and proteoglycans. Alterations in the matrisome have been implicated in the neurodegenerative pathologies including Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this work, we utilized our previously published PD and control proteomics data from human prefrontal cortex and focused our analysis on the matrisome. Among matrisome proteins, we observed a significant enrichment in the expression of type I collagen in PD vs. control samples. We then performed histological analysis on the same samples used for proteomics study, and examined collagen expression using picrosirius red staining. Interestingly, we observed similar trends in collagen abundance in PD vs. control as in our matrisome analysis; thus, this and other histological analyses will be useful as a complementary technique in the future to study the matrisome in PD with a larger cohort, and it may aid in choosing regions of interest for proteomic analysis. Additionally, collagen hydroxyprolination was less variable in PD compared to controls. Glycoproteomic changes in matrisome molecules were also observed in PD relative to aged individuals, especially related to type VI collagen and versican. We further examined the list of differentially expressed matrisome molecules using network topology-based analysis and found that angiogenesis indicated by alterations in decorin and several members of the collagen family was affected in PD. These findings collectively identified matrisome changes associated with PD; further studies with a larger cohort are required to validate the current results.