Phosphoproteomics to tackle brain disorders : Insight into the murine brain phosphoproteome

Sammanfattning: Brain disorders affect the normal functionality of the brain causing inability in controlling certain behaviours. In the last two decades, despite the technological advancement, many biological questions concerning brain mechanisms and neural networks remain still unclear. Thus, the integration of multiple technologies could help on clarify several aspects of neurobiology.The aim of this thesis was to study the function of certain proteins and protein-protein interactions in murine brains by using mass spectrometry-based proteomics. Since one of the main switching mechanisms in cells is thephosphorylation of proteins, the phosphoproteome of murine brains was specifically studied.The results presented in this thesis let to the identification of phosphoproteins implicated in molecular pathways that could be responsible for brain impairment during certain conditions like obesity (Paper I and III), anxiety and depression (Paper III) and Parkinson´s disease (Paper IV). The findings of this thesis remarkably contribute to the proteomic and neurobiology fields and set phosphoproteomics as a powerful tool for the study of neuroscience.