Abstract：Antler is a special osseous organs coverd with blood vessel, nerve inside. Antler development refers to the forming process of male fawn pedicle and first antler after puberty. It has confirmed that the piece of periosteum overlying the lateral crest of prepubertal deer frontal bone is a foundation of antler development, which is known as antlerogenic periosteum (AP). AP holds the patterning information for antler formation. Studies suggest that androgens play an important role in antler development. The aim of the study is to investigate the changes of proteomics before and after AP development, which will help to reveal the underlying molecular mechanisms of androgen induced antler development. The study used androgen stimulated female deer until antlerogenic periosteum developed and extracted total proteins from the treated and control groups AP and applied two-dimensional fluorescence difference gelelectrophoresis (2D-DIGE) to obtain differential expression information of proteins. After that, differentially expressed proteins were identified by MALDI-TOF/MS and analysed the proteins based on the database retrieval. The results showed that there were 318 differentially expressed proteins searched and identified by database selected. Among them, 163 proteins were up-regulated and 155 were down-regulated significantly. MALDI-TOF/MS was used to identify 93 of 318 proteins and there were 17 proteins identified successfully. The 17 identified proteins were classified into 5 categories with different structures and functions and these proteins were associated with binding, enzyme activity, catalytic activity and antioxidant activity. Furthermore, the study had classified the mechanism of antler morphogenesis and offers the experience for further studies. What's more, among the 17 successfully identified proteins, the proteins were classified into 5 categories with different structures and functionsand these proteins were associated with binding, enzyme activity, catalytic activity and antioxidant activity. The study will provide theoretical foundation for revealing growth regulating molecular mechanism of antler development. Furthermore, offer the reference data for the mechanism of organogenesis.
