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Liquid chromatography-selected reaction monitoring (LCSRM) is a highly specific and sensitive mass spectrometry (MS) technique that is widely being applied to selectively qualify and validate candidate markers within complex biological samples. However, in order for LC-SRM methods to take on these attributes, target-specific optimization of sample processing is required, in order to reduce analyte complexity, prior to LC-SRM. In this study, we have developed a targeted platform consisting of protein immunoaffinity enrichment on magnetic beads and LCSRM for measuring carbonic anhydrase 12 (CA12) protein in a renal cell carcinoma (RCC) cell line (PRC3), a candidate biomarker for RCC whose expression at the protein level has not been previously reported. Sample processing and LC-SRM assay were optimized for signature peptides selected as surrogate markers of CA12 protein. Using LC-SRM coupled with stable isotope dilution, we achieved limits of quantitation in the low fmol range sufficient for measuring clinically relevant biomarkers with good intra-and interassay accuracy and precision ([less than or equal to] 17%). Our results show that using a quantitative immunoaffinity capture approach provides specific, accurate, and robust assays amenable to high-throughput verification of potential biomarkers. 10.1021/ac101981t

This publication describes the development of an automated platform for the study of the plasma glycoproteome. The method consists of targeted depletion in-line with glycoprotein fractionation. A key element of this platform is the enabling of high throughput sample processing in a manner that minimizes analytical bias in a clinical sample set. The system, named High Performance Multi-Lectin Affinity Chromatography (HP-MLAC), is composed of a serial configuration of depletion columns containing anti-albumin antibody and protein A with in-line multi-lectin affinity chromatography (M-LAC) which consists of three mixtures of lectins concanavalin A (ConA), jacalin (JAC), and wheat germ agglutinin (WGA). We have demonstrated that this platform gives high recoveries for the fractionation of the plasma proteome ([greater than or equal to] 95%) and excellent stability (over 200 runs). In addition, glycoproteomes isolated using the HP-MLAC platform were shown to be highly reproducible and glycan specific as demonstrated by rechromatography of selected fractions and proteomic analysis of the unbound (glycoproteome 1) and bound (glycoproteome 2) fractions. 10.1021/ac9013308

The productivity of mammalian cell culture expression systems is critically important to file production of biopharmaceuticals. In rids study, a high-producing Chinese hamster ovary cell culture which was transfected with the apoptosis inhibitor Bcl-[X.sub.L] gene was compared to a low-producing control that was not transfected. Shotgun proteomics was used to compare the high and low-producing fed-batch cell cultures at different growth time points. The goals of this study were twofold; it would be of value to find a biomaker that could predict cell lines with higher growth efficiency and to gain mechanistic insights into the effects of the introduction of a foreign gene flint is known to have growth regulating properties in human cells. A total of 392 proteins were identified in lifts study, and 32 of these proteins were determined to be differentially expressed. In the high-producing cell culture, several proteins related to protein metabolism were upregulated, such as eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3 and ribosome 40S. In addition, several intermediate filament proteins such as vimentin and annexin, as well as histone H1.2 and H2A, were down-regulated in the high producer. The expression of these proteins may be indicative of cellular productivity. A growth inhibitor, galectin-1, was downregulated in the high producer, which may be linked to the expression of Bcl-[X.sub.L]. The molecular chaperone BiP was upregulated significantly in the high producer and may indicate an unfolded protein response due to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Several proteins involved in regulation of the cell cycle such as RACK1 and GTPase Ran were found to be differentially expressed, which may be due to a differentially controlled cell cycle between low- and high-producing cell cultures.

The discovery of breast cancer associated plasma/serum biomarkers is important for early diagnosis, disease mechanism elucidation, and determination of treatment strategy for the disease. In this study of serum samples, a multidimensional fractionation platform combined with mass spectrometric analysis were used to achieve the identification of medium to lower abundance proteins, as well as to simultaneously detect glycan and abundance changes. Immuno-affinity depletion and multi-lectin chromatography (M-LAC) were integrated into an automated HPLC platform to remove high abundance protein and fractionate glycoproteins. The collected glycoproteomes were then subjected to isoelectric focusing (IEF) separation by a digital ProteomeChip (dPC), followed by in-gel digestion and LC-MS analysis using an Orbitrap mass spectrometer. As a result, the total number of identified proteins increased significantly when the IEF fractionation step was included as part of the platform. Relevant proteins with biological and disease significance were observed and the dynamic range of the serum proteome measurement was extended. In addition, potential glycan changes were indicated by comparing proteins in control and cancer samples in terms of their affinity to the multi-lectin column (M-LAC) and the pI profiles in IEF separation. In conclusion, a proteomics platform including high abundance protein depletion, lectin affinity fractionation, IEF separation, and LC-MS analysis has been applied to discover breast cancer-associated proteins. The following candidates, thrombospondin-1 and 5, alpha-1B-glycoprotein, serum amyloid P-component, and tenascin-X, were selected as promising examples of the use of this platform. They show potential abundance and glycan changes and will be further investigated in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Site-specific analysis of protein glycosylation is important for biochemical and clinical research efforts. Glycopeptide analysis using liquid chromatography-collision-induced dissociation/electron transfer dissociation mass spectrometry (LC-CID/ETD-MS) allows simultaneous characterization of the glycan structure and attached peptide site. However, due to the low ionization efficiency of glycopeptides during electrospray ionization, 200-500 fmol of sample per injection is needed for a single LC-MS run, which makes it challenging for the analysis of limited amounts of glycoprotein purified from biological matrixes. To improve the sensitivity of LC-MS analysis for glycopeptides, an ultranarrow porous layer open tubular (PLOT) LC column (2.5 m × 10 μm i.d.) was coupled to a linear ion trap (LTQ) collision-induced dissociation/electron transfer dissociation mass spectrometer to provide sensitive analysis of N-linked protein glycosylation heterogeneity. The potential of the developed method is demonstrated by the characterization of site-specific glycosylation using haptoglobin (Hpt) as a model protein. To limit the amount of haptoglobin to low picomole amounts of protein, we affinity purified it from 1 μL of pooled lung cancer patient plasma. A total of 26 glycoforms/glycan compositions on three Hpt tryptic glycopeptides were identified and quantified from 10 LC-MS runs with a consumption of 100 fmol of Hpt digest (13 ng of protein, 10 fmol per injection). Included in this analysis was the determination of the glycan occupancy level. At this sample consumption level, the high sensitivity of the PLOT LC-LTQ-CID/ETD-MS system allowed glycopeptide identification and structure determination, along with relative quantitation of glycans presented on the same peptide backbone, even for low abundant glycopeptides at the ∼100 amol level. The PLOT LC-MS system is shown to have sufficient sensitivity to allow characterization of site-specific protein glycosylation from trace levels of glycosylated proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report progress assembling the parts list for chromosome 17 and illustrate the various processes that we have developed to integrate available data from diverse genomic and proteomic knowledge bases. As primary resources, we have used GPMDB, neXtProt, PeptideAtlas, Human Protein Atlas (HPA), and GeneCards. All sites share the common resource of Ensembl for the genome modeling information. We have defined the chromosome 17 parts list with the following information: 1169 protein-coding genes, the numbers of proteins confidently identified by various experimental approaches as documented in GPMDB, neXtProt, PeptideAtlas, and HPA, examples of typical data sets obtained by RNASeq and proteomic studies of epithelial derived tumor cell lines (disease proteome) and a normal proteome (peripheral mononuclear cells), reported evidence of post-translational modifications, and examples of alternative splice variants (ASVs). We have constructed a list of the 59 "missing" proteins as well as 201 proteins that have inconclusive mass spectrometric (MS) identifications. In this report we have defined a process to establish a baseline for the incorporation of new evidence on protein identification and characterization as well as related information from transcriptome analyses. This initial list of "missing" proteins that will guide the selection of appropriate samples for discovery studies as well as antibody reagents. Also we have illustrated the significant diversity of protein variants (including post-translational modifications, PTMs) using regions on chromosome 17 that contain important oncogenes. We emphasize the need for mandated deposition of proteomics data in public databases, the further development of improved PTM, ASV, and single nucleotide variant (SNV) databases, and the construction of Web sites that can integrate and regularly update such information. In addition, we describe the distribution of both clustered and scattered sets of protein families on the chromosome. Since chromosome 17 is rich in cancer-associated genes, we have focused the clustering of cancer-associated genes in such genomic regions and have used the ERBB2 amplicon as an example of the value of a proteogenomic approach in which one integrates transcriptomic with proteomic information and captures evidence of coexpression through coordinated regulation.

Site-specific analysis of protein glycosylation is important for biochemical and clinical research efforts. Glycopeptide analysis using liquid chromatography-collision-induced dissociation/electron transfer dissociation mass spectrometry (LC-CID/ETD-MS) allows simultaneous characterization of the glycan structure and attached peptide site. However, due to the low ionization efficiency of glycopeptides during electrospray ionization, 200-500 fmol of sample per injection is needed for a single LC-MS run, which makes it challenging for the analysis of limited amounts of glycoprotein purified from biological matrixes. To improve the sensitivity of LC-MS analysis for glycopeptides, an ultranarrow porous layer open tubular (PLOT) LC column (2.5 m × 10 μm i.d.) was coupled to a linear ion trap (LTQ) collision-induced dissociation/electron transfer dissociation mass spectrometer to provide sensitive analysis of N-linked protein glycosylation heterogeneity. The potential of the developed method is demonstrated by the characterization of site-specific glycosylation using haptoglobin (Hpt) as a model protein. To limit the amount of haptoglobin to low picomole amounts of protein, we affinity purified it from 1 μL of pooled lung cancer patient plasma. A total of 26 glycoforms/glycan compositions on three Hpt tryptic glycopeptides were identified and quantified from 10 LC-MS runs with a consumption of 100 fmol of Hpt digest (13 ng of protein, 10 fmol per injection). Included in this analysis was the determination of the glycan occupancy level. At this sample consumption level, the high sensitivity of the PLOT LC-LTQ-CID/ETD-MS system allowed glycopeptide identification and structure determination, along with relative quantitation of glycans presented on the same peptide backbone, even for low abundant glycopeptides at the ∼100 amol level. The PLOT LC-MS system is shown to have sufficient sensitivity to allow characterization of site-specific protein glycosylation from trace levels of glycosylated proteins.

One common method used for analyzing the glycoproteome is chromatography using multiple lectins that display different affinities toward oligosaccharide structures. Much has been done to determine lectin affinity using standard glycoproteins with known glycosylation; however, a knowledge of the selectivity and specificity of lectins exposed to complex mixtures of proteins is required if they are to be used as a means of studying the glycoproteome. In the present study, three lectins (Concanavalin A, Jacalin, and Wheat Germ Agglutinin) were used to fractionate glycoproteins from two different complex environments: (1) cell membranes and (2) plasma. Reproducible enrichment of glycoproteins from these samples has been shown to result from the combined use of these lectins. However, the global glycan profiles of the released N- and O-linked oligosaccharides from the glycoproteins retained by the lectins, and from those glycoproteins that did not bind, using both these complex samples, were found to be very similar. That is, although the lectins selectively and reproducibly retained some glycoproteins, other proteins with the same attached oligosaccharide structures did not bind. Some small N- and O-glycan differences were observed in the bound fractions but there was little absolute specificity toward individual oligosaccharide structures known to have high affinity to these lectins. These data indicate that lectins are useful for fractionating glycoproteins from complex mixtures, but that the overall glycoproteome is not isolated by this approach.