An alkyne derivative of puromycin used to supervise newly protein synthesis, named O-propargyl-puromycin (OPP), is a potent protein synthesis inhibitor that stopping translation through be incorporated into the C-terminus of translating polypeptide chains.
OPP can conjugate with nascent polypeptide chains thus constituting a covalent form. In addition, OPP can be visualised or captured through copper (I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition [1]. Thus, OPP often regarded as a marker suitable for imaging and identifying nascent proteins in cells and animals. The research has reported that in CHO cells, the OPP-labelling could quantify global protein synthesis. Moreover, at the single-cell level, the OPP-labelling enables correlation of global protein synthesis rates with DNA content [2]. In vivo, the injected OPP mice tissues display specific cohesion with nascent proteins than the uninjected mice tissues [1]. OPP-mediated identification (OPP-ID), is a technique to find how cells regulate the nascent protein expression that can apply in most cell types when cells suffer stimuli and stress [3].
References:
[1] Liu J, Xu Y, Stoleru D, et al. Imaging protein synthesis in cells and tissues with an alkyne analog of puromycin.[J]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012, 109(2):413.
[2] Nagelreiter F, Coats M, Klanert G, et al. OPP labelling enables total protein synthesis quantification in CHO production cell lines at the single‐cell level [J]. Biotechnology Journal, 2018, 13(4):1700492.
[3] Forester C M, Zhao Q, Phillips N J, et al. Revealing nascent proteomics in signaling pathways and cell differentiation.[J]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018, 115(10):2353-2358.