Integrated proteogenomic profiling reveals coordinated differential expression signatures during neuroinflammation.

BACKGROUND

Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) is a key model of autoimmune neuroinflammation, yet an integrated characterization of transcriptional and proteomic dysregulation of the CNS has been missing.

METHODS

In this study, we performed deep proteogenomic profiling of the spinal cord from mice induced with EAE during acute disease by combining RNA-seq (GEO, GSE330115) and LC-MS/MS (PRIDE, PXD078146).

RESULTS

We identified extensive upregulation of innate and adaptive immune response signatures alongside concordant downregulation of neuronal, synaptic, and mitochondrial pathways. Despite expected divergence as reported in previous studies discussing neuroinflammation models, log₂ fold changes and pathway enrichment scores showed high concordance between both gene product levels (Rp = 0.867, p < 2.2 × 10⁻1⁶, 95% CI [0.859, 0.874]). Loss of synaptic and metabolic integrity was predominantly observed at the protein level, whereas transcriptomics alone underestimated these structural deficits. In addition to inflammatory changes within CNS-resident cells during pathology analysis of markers typically absent in healthy CNS suggested that immune cell infiltration, in addition to pro-inflammatory phenotypic shifts of CNS-resident glial cells, accounts for the majority of non-CNS protein level changes in EAE, rather than passive plasma leakage.

CONCLUSION

Together, this integrated dataset reveals coordinated multilayer molecular remodelling in neuroinflammation and refines mechanistic interpretation of biomarker origin in inflamed CNS tissue in mice.