Comprehensive proximity proteomics expand the known interactome of the oncoprotein β-catenin

Abstract

The oncoprotein β-catenin has critical roles in cell adhesion and cell signalling. β-catenin affects human physiology and pathology through numerous interaction partners, of which many have been discovered by standard affinity purification-based proteomics. However, the interaction landscape of β-catenin remains incompletely understood, highlighting a need for new experimental approaches for the exploration of β-catenin biology. Proximity proteomics, which facilitate the discovery of molecules vicinal to proteins-of-interest by mass spectrometry, have recently emerged as a powerful complementary tool for the study of protein–protein interactions, but have not been applied to β-catenin so far. We investigated the interactome of β-catenin in model cell lines by proximity proteomics using expression constructs with the biotin ligases BioID and TurboID. Mass spectrometry analyses following biotin labelling identified numerous candidate interactors of β-catenin, including many that had not been observed in earlier studies using standard proteomics. Enrichment analyses suggested that proximity proteomics capture proteins associated with the known biological functions of β-catenin, including cell adhesion, Wnt/β-catenin signalling, and transcription regulation. The molecular tools and data generated in this study provide new insights into β-catenin biology and highlight potential new regulators of β-catenin function that warrant further exploration.