Shared and Unique Proteins in Human, Mouse and Rat Saliva Proteomes: Footprints of Functional Adaptation

The overall goal of our study was to compare the proteins found in the saliva proteomes of three mammals: human, mouse and rat. Our first objective was to compare two human proteomes with very different analysis depths. The 89 shared proteins in this comparison apparently represent a core of highly-expressed human salivary proteins. Of the proteins unique to each proteome, one-half to 2/3 lack signal peptides and probably are contaminants instead of less highly-represented salivary proteins. We recently published the first rodent saliva proteomes with saliva collected from the genome mouse (C57BL/6) and the genome rat (BN/SsNHsd/Mcwi). Our second objective was to compare the proteins in the human proteome with those we identified in the genome mouse and rat to determine those common to all three mammals, as well as the specialized rodent subset. We also identified proteins unique to each of the three mammals, because differences in the secreted protein constitutions can provide clues to differences in the evolutionary adaptation of the secretions in the three different mammals.