Protein resource allocation across subcellular compartments revealed by large-scale absolute quantitative proteomics in yeast.

Subcellular protein mass fraction in yeast is highly uneven and covaries with specific growth rate, with nucleus PMF reduced at high growth rates as ribosome demand increases.

• Why it matters: Spatial segregation of proteins underpins metabolic specialization, but system-level rules linking compartmental resource allocation to growth and physiology remain unclear across conditions and species.
• What they did: The authors compiled 300 absolute quantitative proteomes across two yeast species under diverse experimental conditions, using big-data analysis, formula fitting, and machine learning to relate protein abundance, resource allocation, and cellular phenotypes.
• The result: PMF from a few compartments (e.g., nucleus and ribosomes) predicts physiological parameters like specific growth rate and oxygen uptake rate, and a limited protein set (≥ 23) captures variation across seven major compartments.