Proteome of spleen CD4 lymphocytes in mouse preimplantation pregnancy.

Pregnancy exerts profound impact on female immune system. The first signs of pregnancy recognition by immune system are observed even before implantation. The most visible effects are present in the local compartment, i.e. in uterine draining lymph nodes and the decidua, while peripheral changes are less obvious. In our recent paper we indicated that costimulation phenotype of APCs in spleens of female mice during the preimplantation period of pregnancy differs from mice in pseudopregnancy. However, the effect of differential costimulation in the context of the T lymphocyte function at periphery in early pregnancy is still unknown. For that reason, we decided to investigate global protein expression in splenic CD4(+) lymphocytes in order to identify and validate the most important biomarkers characteristic for the preimplantation period of pregnancy at periphery. Two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) and mass spectrometry (MS) were utilized to analyze the protein expression pattern of magnetically sorted CD4(+) lymphocytes from spleens of pregnant and pseudopregnant females at 3.5 days after mating. The first goal of this study was to create a 2-DE map of the splenic CD4(+) T cells of pregnant mice. As a result, 106 protein spots from 373 were identified using MS. The comparison of lymphocyte protein patterns between pregnant and pseudopregnant mice depicted differential expression of 11 identified proteins belonging to the group of proteins involved in cytoskeletal structure, cell motility and metabolism. Profoundly diminished expression of cofilin-1, F-actin capping protein subunit alpha and malate dehydrogenase proteins in lymphocytes of pregnant mice indicates that preimplantation pregnancy could change the activation state of peripheral CD4(+) lymphocytes.