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The MAP tag system comprises a 14-residue peptide derived from mouse podoplanin and its high-affinity monoclonal antibody PMab-1. We determined the crystal structure of PMab-1 complexed with the MAP tag peptide and found that the recognition required only the N-terminal 8 residues of MAP tag sequence, enabling the shortening of the tag length without losing the affinity for PMab-1. Furthermore, the structure illustrated that the MAP tag adopts a U-shaped conformation when bound by PMab-1, suggesting that loop-inserted MAP tag would assume conformation compatible with the PMab-1 binding. We inserted the 8-residue MAP tag into multiple loop regions in various proteins including fibronectin type III domain and G-protein-coupled receptors and tested if they maintain PMab-1 reactivity. Despite the conformational restraints forced by the insertion position, all MAP-inserted mutants were expressed well in mammalian cells at levels comparable to the non-tagged proteins. Furthermore, the binding by PMab-1 was fully maintained even for the mutant where MAP tag was inserted at a structurally restricted β-hairpin, indicating that the MAP tag system has unique feature that allows placement in the middle of protein domain at desired locations. Our results indicate the versatile utility of the MAP tag system in ‘site-specific epitope insertion’ application.

Metal complexes with an N-terminally free and N-terminally acetylated polyhistidine region of Echis ocellatus venom, with an interesting His-rich motif present in numerous metal binding proteins from all kingdoms of life (DHDHDHHHHHHPGSSV-NH2 and Ac-DHDHDHHHHHHPGSSV-NH2) show the role of the free amino group in the thermodynamic enhancement of Cu2+, Ni2+ and Zn2+ binding. In the studied sequences, Cu2+ can be coordinated by different sets of imidazole rings, and a 3–10 helix is detected in close proximity of Cu2+ binding sites. The complexes are more stable than those with a typical His6-tag, despite a similar copper(II) coordination mode in both cases.

Annotation of peptide sequence from tandem mass spectra constitutes the central step of mass spectrometry-based proteomics. Peptide mass spectra are obtained upon gas-phase fragmentation. Identification of the protein from a set of experimental peptide spectral matches is usually referred as protein inference. Occurrence and intensity of these fragment ions in the MS/MS spectra are dependent on many factors such as amino acid composition, peptide basicity, activation mode, protease, etc. Particularly, chemical derivatizations of peptides were known to alter their fragmentation. In this study, the influence of acetylation, guanidinylation, and their combination on peptide fragmentation was assessed initially on a lipase (LipA) from Bacillus subtilis followed by a bovine six protein mix digest. The dual modification resulted in improved fragment ion occurrence and intensity changes, and this resulted in the equivalent representation of b- and y-type fragment ions in an ion trap MS/MS spectrum. The improved representation has allowed us to accurately annotate the peptide sequences de novo. Dual labeling has significantly reduced the false positive protein identifications in standard bovine six peptide digest. Our study suggests that the combinatorial labeling of peptides is a useful method to validate protein identifications for high confidence protein inference. Graphical Abstract ᅟ.

Peptide amidination labeling using S-methyl thioacetimidate (SMTA) is investigated in an attempt to increase the number and types of peptides that can be detected in a bottom-up proteomics experiment. This derivatization method affects the basicity of lysine residues, and is shown here to significantly impact the idiosyncracies of peptide fragmentation and peptide detectability. The unique and highly reproducible fragmentation properties of SMTA-labeled peptides, such as the strong propensity for forming b1 fragment ions, can be further exploited to modify the scoring of peptide-spectrum pairs and improve peptide identification. To this end, we have developed a supervised post-processing algorithm to exploit these characteristics of peptides labeled by SMTA. Our experiments show that, although the overall number of identifications are similar, the SMTA modification enabled the detection of 16-26% peptides not previously observed in comparable CID/HCD tandem mass spectrometry experiments without SMTA labeling.

Snake venoms are complex mixtures of toxic and often spectacularly biologically active components. Some African vipers contain polyhistidine and polyglycine peptides, which play a crucial role in the interaction with metal ions during the inhibition of snake metalloproteases. Polyhistidine peptide fragments, known as poly-His tags, play many important functions, e.g., in metal ion transport in bacterial chaperon proteins. In this paper, we report a detailed characterization of Cu(2+), Ni(2+), and Zn(2+) complexes with the EDDHHHHHHHHHG peptide fragment (pHG) derived from the venom of the rough scale bush viper (Atheris squamigera). In order to determine the thermodynamic properties, stoichiometry, binding sites, and structures of the metal-pHG complexes, we used a combination of experimental techniques (potentiometric titrations, electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, UV-vis spectroscopy, circular dichroism spectroscopy, and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy) and extensive computational tools (molecular dynamics simulations and density functional theory calculations). The results showed that pHG has a high affinity toward metal ions. The numerous histidine residues located along this sequence are efficient metal ion chelators with high affinities toward Cu(2+), Ni(2+), and Zn(2+) ions. The formation of an α-helical structure induced by metal ion coordination and the occurrence of polymorphic binding states were observed. It is proposed that metal ions can "move along" the poly-His tag, which serves as a metal ion transport pathway. The coordination of Cu(2+), Ni(2+), and Zn(2+) ions to the histidine tag is very effective in comparison with other histidine-rich peptides. The stabilities of the metal-pHG complexes increase in the order Zn(2+)Ni(2+)≪ Cu(2+).

With tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), spectra can be generated by various fragmentation techniques including collision-induced dissociation (CID), higher-energy collisional dissociation (HCD), electron capture dissociation (ECD), electron transfer dissociation (ETD) and so on. At the same time, de novo sequencing using multiple spectra from the same peptide generated by different fragmentation techniques is becoming popular in proteomics studies. The focus of this study is the use of paired spectra from CID (or HCD) and ECD (or ETD) fragmentation because of the complementarity between them. We present a de novo peptide sequencing framework for multiple tandem mass spectra, and apply it to paired spectra sequencing problem. The performance of the framework on paired spectra is compared to another successful method named ${\rm pNovo}+$ . The results show that our proposed method outperforms ${\rm pNovo}+$ in terms of full length peptide sequencing accuracy on three pairs of experimental datasets, with the accuracy increasing up to 13.6% compared to ${\rm pNovo}+$ .

A novel class of ionization tags, based on 5-azoniaspiro[4.4]nonyl (ASN+) scaffold were designed for improved analysis of peptides by electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS). A new labeling agent, 1-{[3-oxo-3-(pentafluorophenoxy)propyl]carbamoyl}-5-azoniaspiro[4.4]nonane, was developed to react with amine and/or thiol group-containing peptides. The ionization efficiency of peptides resulting from derivatization was enhanced 10-100 fold, depending on the peptide sequence and hydrophobicity of the ionization tag. The proposed tags are completely stable during collision-induced dissociation (CID) experiments: they do not undergo unwanted fragmentation via Hofmann elimination and, more importantly, they cannot be removed by intermolecular nucleophilic attack. Moreover, CID of the derivatized peptide ions generates a dominant series of y-type fragment ions with a high sequence coverage. The proposed procedure was successfully tested on digested model proteins: ubiquitin and bovine serum albumin. We also synthesized isotopically labeled analog of 5-azoniaspiro[4.4]nonyl tag to check its applicability for comparative quantitative LC-ESI-MS analysis. The obtained results indicate the general usefulness of the 5-azoniaspiro[4.4]nonyl quaternary ammonium ionization tag for LC-ESI-MS/MS sequencing and quantification of peptides, especially for those of low abundance.

N- and C-terminal amino acid sequences of human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2), purified from breast cancer cell lines (SK-BR-3 and BT-474), were analyzed at the protein level using mass spectrometry. Two N-terminal peptides and one C-terminal peptide were obtained. Their MALDI-PSD analyses indicated that one of the N-terminal sequences and the C-terminal sequence were identical to those found in UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot. However, the other N-terminal sequence was not in the database and was considered as a novel variant. This variant may result from the cleavage at a potential alternative site for cleavage of the signal peptide.

There are two approaches for de novo protein sequencing: Edman degradation and mass spectrometry (MS). Existing MS-based methods characterize a novel protein by assembling tandem mass spectra of overlapping peptides generated from multiple proteolytic digestions of the protein. Because each tandem mass spectrum covers only a short peptide of the target protein, the key to high coverage protein sequencing is to find spectral pairs from overlapping peptides in order to assemble tandem mass spectra to long ones. However, overlapping regions of peptides may be too short to be confidently identified. High-resolution mass spectrometers have become accessible to many laboratories. These mass spectrometers are capable of analyzing molecules of large mass values, boosting the development of top-down MS. Top-down tandem mass spectra cover whole proteins. However, top-down tandem mass spectra, even combined, rarely provide full ion fragmentation coverage of a protein. We propose an algorithm, TBNovo, for de novo protein sequencing by combining top-down and bottom-up MS. In TBNovo, a top-down tandem mass spectrum is utilized as a scaffold, and bottom-up tandem mass spectra are aligned to the scaffold to increase sequence coverage. Experiments on data sets of two proteins showed that TBNovo achieved high sequence coverage and high sequence accuracy.

In recent years, de novo peptide sequencing from mass spectrometry data has developed as one of the major peptide identification methods with the emergence of new instruments and advanced computational methods. However, there are still limitations to this method; for example, the typically used spectrum graph model cannot represent all the information and relationships inherent in tandem mass spectra (MS/MS spectra). Here, we present a new method named NovoHCD which applies a spectrum graph model with multiple types of edges (called a multi-edge graph), and integrates into it amino acid combination (AAC) information and peptide tags. In addition, information on immonium ions observed particularly in higher-energy collisional dissociation (HCD) spectra is incorporated. Comparisons between NovoHCD and another successful de novo peptide sequencing method for HCD spectra, pNovo, were performed. Experiments were conducted on five HCD spectral datasets. Results show that NovoHCD outperforms pNovo in terms of full length peptide identification accuracy; specifically, the accuracy increases 13%-21% over the five datasets.

A new imidazolo- and thiol-containing ligand is prepared and characterized with the intent to serve as surrogate and mimic for the canonical ligands imidazole and hexa-histidinyl peptide (his-6) in immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) [1,2] systems. The affinity of this ligand: 1,8 bis (N1,N1')imidazolo-octa-(3,6)-dithiane or bImOdS, to Ni-nitrilotriacetic acid (Ni-NTA) complex in solution is measured and compared with that of imidazole and his-6 peptide via isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). In addition, bImOdS is compared with his-6 binding to the solid-state matrix of Ni-NTA-charged agarose beads, as employed routinely in IMAC. Results reported here include the following: (1) two imidazole moieties bind within a single Ni-NTA complex, while bImOds, being an imidazolo dimer, binds with 1:1, and his-6 peptide binds with 1:3 stoichiometry. (2) Enthalpies of reaction for imidazole and his-6 peptide are reported - these can be utilized to predict changes in affinity in IMAC systems with temperature, should protein unfolding/refolding steps in purification be desired at alternate temperatures. (3) Metal analyses of the Ni-NTA agarose beads suggests that ∼2/3 of the nickel is present in low-affinity sites, which will complicate protein separations at high protein-concentration loading. An improved procedure for subtracting ligand dilution heats from ITC analyses is presented in an Appendix.

The establishment of efficient and safe gene delivery systems is crucial for biomedical applications. To address this objective, novel, ternary hybrid gene vectors are designed with viral capsid peptides in non-viral gene carriers. The viral peptide, TQVGQKT, is coupled with a membrane active peptide, LK15. Which acts as a linker to tag peptide with plasmid DNA. Additionally, polyethylenimine (PEI) is employed to condense the complexes further, thereby forming ternary DNA/TQVGQKT-LK15/PEI complexes. The ternary complexes result in rapid internalization leading to significantly enhanced cellular transfection. The new moiety, TQVGQKT, as well as enhanced cellular transfection, will certainly provide crucial insights for the design of novel non-viral gene carriers with efficient and safe properties.

Characterization of protein cross-linking, particularly without prior knowledge of the chemical nature and site of cross-linking, poses a significant challenge, because of their intrinsic structural complexity and the lack of a comprehensive analytical approach. Toward this end, we have developed a generally applicable workflow-XChem-Finder-that involves four stages: (1) detection of cross-linked peptides via (18)O-labeling at C-termini; (2) determination of the putative partial sequences of each cross-linked peptide pair using a fragment ion mass database search against known protein sequences coupled with a de novo sequence tag search; (3) extension to full sequences based on protease specificity, the unique combination of mass, and other constraints; and (4) deduction of cross-linking chemistry and site. The mass difference between the sum of two putative full-length peptides and the cross-linked peptide provides the formulas (elemental composition analysis) for the functional groups involved in each cross-linking. Combined with sequence restraint from MS/MS data, plausible cross-linking chemistry and site were inferred, and ultimately confirmed, by matching with all data. Applying our approach to a stressed IgG2 antibody, 10 cross-linked peptides were discovered and found to be connected via thioethers originating from disulfides at locations that had not been previously recognized. Furthermore, once the cross-link chemistry was revealed, a targeted cross-link search yielded 4 additional cross-linked peptides that all contain the C-terminus of the light chain.

A straightforward cleavage method for N- acylated peptides based on the phenylthiohydantoin (PTH) formation is presented. The procedure could be applied to acid-stable resins, such as TentaGel HL–NH\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$_{2}$$\end{document}. We designed a cleavable linker that consists of a lysine residue with the \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\upalpha $$\end{document}-amino group blocked by Boc, whereas the \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\upvarepsilon $$\end{document}-amino group is used for peptide synthesis. After the peptide assembly is completed, the protecting groups in peptide side chains are removed using trifluoroacetic acid, thus liberating also the \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\upalpha $$\end{document}-amino group of the lysine in the linker. Then the reaction with phenyl isothiocyanate followed by acidolysis causes an efficient peptide release from the resin as a stable PTH derivative. Furthermore, the application of a fixed charge tag in the form of 2-(4-aza-1-azoniabicyclo[2.2.2]octylammonium)acetyl group increases ionization efficiency and reduces the detection limit, allowing ESI-MS/MS sequencing of peptides in the subfemtomolar range. The proposed strategy is compatible with standard conditions during one-bead-one-compound peptide library synthesis. The applicability of the developed strategy in combinatorial chemistry was confirmed using a small training library of \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\upalpha $$\end{document}-chymotrypsin substrates. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11030-013-9453-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A comprehensive investigation was performed to understand the influence of sequence scrambling in peptide ions on peptide identification results. To achieve this, four tandem mass spectrometry datasets with scrambled ions included and with them excluded were analyzed by Crux, X!Tandem, SpectraST, Lutefisk, and PepNovo. While the different algorithms differed in their performance, an increase in the number of correctly identified peptides was generally observed when removing scrambled ions, with the exception of the SpectraST algorithm. However, the variation of the match scores upon removal was unpredictable. Following these investigations, an interpretation was given on how the scrambled ions affect peptide identification. Lastly, a simulated theoretical mass spectral library derived from the NIST peptide Libraries was constructed and searched by SpectraST to study whether scrambled ions in predicted mass spectra could affect peptide identification. Consistent with the peptide library search results, no significant variations for dot product scores as well as peptide identification results were observed when these ions were included in the theoretical MS/MS spectra. From the five adopted algorithms, the SpectraST and Crux provided the most robust results, whereas X!Tandem, PepNovo, and Lutefisk were sensitive to the existence of the scrambled ions, especially the latter two de novo sequencing algorithms.

Terminal residues of protein chains are charged and more flexible than other residues since they are constrained only on one side. Do they play a particular role in protein-protein and protein-DNA interfaces? To answer this question, we considered large sets of non-redundant protein-protein and protein-DNA complexes and analyzed the status of terminal residues and their involvement in interfaces. In protein-protein complexes, we found that more than half of terminal residues (62%) are either modified by attachment of a tag peptide (10%) or have missing coordinates in the analyzed structures (52%). Terminal residues are almost exclusively located at the surface of proteins (94%). Contrary to charged residues, they are not over or under-represented in protein-protein interfaces, but strongly prefer the peripheral region of interfaces when present at the interface (83% of terminal residues). The almost exclusive location of terminal residues at the surface of the proteins or in the rim regions of interfaces explains that experimental methods relying on tail hybridization can be successfully applied without disrupting the complexes under study. Concerning conformational rearrangement in protein-protein complexes, despite their expected flexibility, terminal residues adopt similar locations between the free and bound forms of the docking benchmark. In protein-DNA complexes, N-terminal residues are twice more frequent than C-terminal residues at interfaces. Both N-terminal and C-terminal residues are under-represented in interfaces, in contrast to positively charged residues, which are strongly favored. When located in protein-DNA interfaces, terminal residues prefer the periphery. N-terminal and C-terminal residues thus have particular properties with regard to interfaces, which cannot be reduced to their charged nature.

De novo peptide sequencing by mass spectrometry represents an important strategy for characterizing novel peptides and proteins, in which a peptide's amino acid sequence is inferred directly from the precursor peptide mass and tandem mass spectrum (MS/MS or MS(3)) fragment ions, without comparison to a reference proteome. This method is ideal for organisms or samples lacking a complete or well-annotated reference sequence set. One of the major barriers to de novo spectral interpretation arises from confusion of N- and C-terminal ion series due to the symmetry between b and y ion pairs created by collisional activation methods (or c, z ions for electron-based activation methods). This is known as the "antisymmetric path problem" and leads to inverted amino acid subsequences within a de novo reconstruction. Here, we combine several key strategies for de novo peptide sequencing into a single high-throughput pipeline: high-efficiency carbamylation blocks lysine side chains, and subsequent tryptic digestion and N-terminal peptide derivatization with the ultraviolet chromophore AMCA yield peptides susceptible to 351 nm ultraviolet photodissociation (UVPD). UVPD-MS/MS of the AMCA-modified peptides then predominantly produces y ions in the MS/MS spectra, specifically addressing the antisymmetric path problem. Finally, the program UVnovo applies a random forest algorithm to automatically learn from and then interpret UVPD mass spectra, passing results to a hidden Markov model for de novo sequence prediction and scoring. We show this combined strategy provides high-performance de novo peptide sequencing, enabling the de novo sequencing of thousands of peptides from an Escherichia coli lysate at high confidence.

Top-down mass spectrometry has been used to investigate structural diversity within some abundant salivary protein families. In this study, we report the identification of two isoforms of protein II-2 which differed in mass by less than 1 Da, the determination of a sequence for protein IB8a that was best satisfied by including a mutation and a covalent modification in the C-terminal part, and the assignment of a sequence of a previously unreported protein of mass 10433 Da. The final characterization of Peptide P-J was achieved, and the discovery of a truncated form of this peptide was reported. The first sequence assignment was done at low resolution using a hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight instrument to quickly identify and characterize proteins, and data acquisition was switched to Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) for proteins that required additional sequence coverage and certainty of assignment. High-resolution and high mass accuracy mass spectrometry on a FTICR-mass spectrometry (MS) instrument combined with electron-capture dissociation (ECD) provided the most informative data sets, with the more frequent presence of "unique" ions that unambiguously define the primary structure. A mixture of predictable and unusual post-translational modifications in the protein sequence precluded the use of shotgun-annotated databases at this stage, requiring manual iterations of sequence refinement in many cases. This led us to propose guidelines for an iterative processing workflow of MS and MSMS data sets that allow researchers to completely assign the identity and the structure of a protein.

Amidation is a post-translational modification found at the C-terminus of ~50% of all neuropeptide hormones. Cleavage of the C(α)-N bond of a C-terminal glycine yields the α-amidated peptide in a reaction catalyzed by peptidylglycine α-amidating monooxygenase (PAM). The mass of an α-amidated peptide decreases by 58 Da relative to its precursor. The amino acid sequences of an α-amidated peptide and its precursor differ only by the C-terminal glycine meaning that the peptides exhibit similar RP-HPLC properties and tandem mass spectral (MS/MS) fragmentation patterns. Growth of cultured cells in the presence of a PAM inhibitor ensured the coexistence of α-amidated peptides and their precursors. A strategy was developed for precursor and α-amidated peptide pairing (PAPP): LC-MS/MS data of peptide extracts were scanned for peptide pairs that differed by 58 Da in mass, but had similar RP-HPLC retention times. The resulting peptide pairs were validated by checking for similar fragmentation patterns in their MS/MS data prior to identification by database searching or manual interpretation. This approach significantly reduced the number of spectra requiring interpretation, decreasing the computing time required for database searching and enabling manual interpretation of unidentified spectra. Reported here are the α-amidated peptides identified from AtT-20 cells using the PAPP method.

Here we report on a novel peptide library based method for HLA class II binding motif identification. The approach is based on water soluble HLA class II molecules and soluble dedicated peptide libraries. A high number of different synthetic peptides are competing to interact with a limited amount of HLA molecules, giving a selective force in the binding. The peptide libraries can be designed so that the sequence length, the alignment of binding registers, the numbers and composition of random positions are controlled, and also modified amino acids can be included. Selected library peptides bound to HLA are then isolated by size exclusion chromatography and sequenced by tandem mass spectrometry online coupled to liquid chromatography. The MS/MS data are subsequently searched against a library defined database using a search engine such as Mascot, followed by manual inspection of the results. We used two dodecamer and two decamer peptide libraries and HLA-DQ2.5 to test possibilities and limits of this method. The selected sequences which we identified in the fraction eluted from HLA-DQ2.5 showed a higher average of their predicted binding affinity values compared to the original peptide library. The eluted sequences fit very well with the previously described HLA-DQ2.5 peptide binding motif. This novel method, limited by library complexity and sensitivity of mass spectrometry, allows the analysis of several thousand synthetic sequences concomitantly in a simple water soluble format. Here we report on a novel peptide library based method for HLA class II binding motif identification. The approach is based on water soluble HLA class II molecules and soluble dedicated peptide libraries. A high number of different synthetic peptides are competing to interact with a limited amount of HLA molecules, giving a selective force in the binding. The peptide libraries can be designed so that the sequence length, the alignment of binding registers, the numbers and composition of random positions are controlled, and also modified amino acids can be included. Selected library peptides bound to HLA are then isolated by size exclusion chromatography and sequenced by tandem mass spectrometry online coupled to liquid chromatography. The MS/MS data are subsequently searched against a library defined database using a search engine such as Mascot, followed by manual inspection of the results. We used two dodecamer and two decamer peptide libraries and HLA-DQ2.5 to test possibilities and limits of this method. The selected sequences which we identified in the fraction eluted from HLA-DQ2.5 showed a higher average of their predicted binding affinity values compared to the original peptide library. The eluted sequences fit very well with the previously described HLA-DQ2.5 peptide binding motif. This novel method, limited by library complexity and sensitivity of mass spectrometry, allows the analysis of several thousand synthetic sequences concomitantly in a simple water soluble format.

The modification of serine and threonine residues in proteins by a single N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) residue is an emerging post-translational modification (PTM) with broad biological implications. However, the systematic or large-scale analysis of this PTM is hampered by several factors, including low stoichiometry and the lability of the O-glycosidic bond during tandem mass spectrometry. Using a library of 72 synthetic glycopeptides, we developed a two-stage tandem MS approach consisting of pulsed Q dissociation (PQD) for O-GlcNAc peptide detection and electron transfer dissociation (ETD) for identification and site localization. Based on a set of O-GlcNAc specific fragment ions, we further developed a score (OScore) that discriminates O-GlcNAc peptide spectra from spectra of unmodified peptides with 95% sensitivity and >99% specificity. Integrating the OScore into the two-stage LC-MS/MS approach detected O-GlcNAc peptides in the low fmol range and at 10-fold better sensitivity than a single data-dependent ETD tandem MS experiment.

A novel approach of sequence pattern correlation has been applied to predict an expected amino acid sequence from CID ESI-MS spectra. The proposed approach deduces sequence patterns with no help from known protein database such that it is useful to identify an unknown peptide or new protein. The algorithm applies a cross-correlation to match an experimental CID spectrum with predicted sequence pattern generated from fragmentation information. The fragmentation knowledge of both y-series and other non y-series are utilized to generate the predicted sequence patterns. In contrast to the normal de novo approach, the proposed approach is insensitive to mass tolerance and non-susceptive to spectral integrality with no need for selection of a starting point.

Protein surface accessible residues play an important role in protein folding, protein-protein interactions and protein-ligand binding. However, a common problem associated with the use of selective chemical labeling methods for mapping protein solvent accessible residues is that when a complicated peptide mixture resulting from a large protein or protein complex is analyzed, the modified peptides may be difficult to identify and characterize amongst the largely unmodified peptide population (i.e., the 'needle in a haystack' problem). To address this challenge, we describe here the development of a strategy involving the synthesis and application of a novel 'fixed charge' sulfonium ion containing lysine-specific protein modification reagent, S,S'-dimethylthiobutanoylhydroxysuccinimide ester (DMBNHS), coupled with capillary HPLC-ESI-MS, automated CID-MS/MS, and data-dependant neutral loss mode MS(3) in an ion trap mass spectrometer, to map the surface accessible lysine residues in a small model protein, cellular retinoic acid binding protein II (CRABP II). After reaction with different reagent:protein ratios and digestion with Glu-C, modified peptides are selectively identified and the number of modifications within each peptide are determined by CID-MS/MS, via the exclusive neutral loss(es) of dimethylsulfide, independently of the amino acid composition and precursor ion charge state (i.e., proton mobility) of the peptide. The observation of these characteristic neutral losses are then used to automatically 'trigger' the acquisition of an MS(3) spectrum to allow the peptide sequence and the site(s) of modification to be characterized. Using this approach, the experimentally determined relative solvent accessibilities of the lysine residues were found to show good agreement with the known solution structure of CRABP II.

Fluorescence labeling is a useful technique for structural and functional analyses of proteins. In a previous study, we developed position-specific incorporation of visible wavelength fluorescent non-natural amino acids carrying relatively small BODIPY fluorophores into proteins, in response to a four-base codon CGGG. Here, we have expanded this position-specific fluorescence labeling method to include relatively large non-natural amino acids carrying photostable rhodamine dyes. TAMRA-linked aminophenylalanine was synthesized and attached to a tRNA having a four-base anticodon, and its incorporation into proteins was examined in an Escherichia coli cell-free translation system. TAMRA-labeled amino acids were successfully incorporated into proteins, although incorporation was allowed only at the N-terminal region. Insertion of two codons encoding a stop codon in the + 1 frame before four-base codon suppressed the expression of non-labeled proteins that may have been produced by spontaneous + 1 frameshift upstream of the four-base codon. Alternation of the incorporation position affected the expression level of the TAMRA-labeled protein. In addition, alternation of upstream and downstream codons affected the efficiency and accuracy of TAMRA-labeled amino acid incorporation. Based on these results, a novel tag peptide was developed; it contained the four-base codon at the 9th position with optimized upstream and downstream codons. This tag peptide was effective for producing proteins with various fluorescent labels at the N-terminal region.

We present a novel approach to perform C-terminal sequence analysis by discriminating the C-terminal peptide in a mass spectral analysis of a CNBr digest. During CNBr cleavage, all Met-Xxx peptide bonds are cleaved and the generated internal peptides all end with a homoserine lactone (hsl)-derivative. The partial opening of the hsl-derivatives, by using a slightly basic buffer solution, results in the formation of m/z doublets (Deltam=18 Da) for all internal peptides and allows to identify the C-terminal peptide which appears as a singlet in the mass spectra. Using two model proteins we demonstrate that this approach can be applied to study proteins purified in gel or in solution. The chemical opening of the hsl-derivative does not require any sample clean-up and therefore, the sensitivity of the C-terminal sequencing approach is increased significantly. Finally, the new protocol was applied to characterize the C-terminal sequence of two recombinant proteins. Tandem mass spectrometry by MALDI-TOF/TOF allowed to identify the sequence of the C-terminal peptides. This novel approach will allow to perform a proteome-wide study of C-terminal proteolytic processing events in a high-throughput fashion.

A simple and effective method was developed for peptide sequencing and protein identification through the determination of its N-terminal residue. The method of N-terminal carbamidomethylation with iodoacetamide could specifically and remarkably enhance the intensity of a(1) ions in the tandem mass spectra of the peptide derivatives without significantly altering their fragmentation pattern, thus allowing determination of their N-terminal residues. The effectiveness and specificity of the method was demonstrated by confirming and extending sequence interpretation of several model peptides and proteins. The developed method was then applied in the LC-MS/MS analysis of the tryptic digests of myoglobin and a whole protein extract from rat heart tissues. The results from database searches were well validated with the enhancement of a(1) ions in tandem mass spectra and the specificity of protein identification was obtained when the information of N-terminal residues was included in the database search.

We used a N-biotinylated peptide analog of the C-terminal domain of the tumor suppressor protein, p21cip1/waf1 to elucidate peptide/protein interacting partners. The C-terminal domain of p21cip1/waf1 protein spanning 141-160 amino acid residues is known to bind PCNA and this interaction is important in many biological processes including cell-cycle control. This C-terminal 20-mer efficiently extracts PCNA in the presence of a variety of N- or C-terminally attached affinity tags. Using difference silver stained 2D gels combined with in-gel tryptic digests, we identified the difference spots using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry-based peptide mass fingerprinting followed by a database search using PROFOUND against NCBIs human nonredundant protein sequence data bank. Identified spots include the p48 subunit of chromatin assembly factor-1, the heat shock 70 protein analog BiP, calmodulin, nucleolin and a spot similar in size to dimeric PCNA. In contrast, microcapillary ion-trap LC-MS/MS analysis of a tryptic digest of entire affinity extracts derived from both control and experimental runs followed by database searches using SEQUEST confirmed the presence of most of the above proteins. This strategy also identified hnRNPA1, HPSP90alpha, HSP40 and T-complex protein 1, a protein similar to prothymosin, and a possible allelic variant of the p21cip1/waf1 protein. The use of N-biotinylated peptide derived from the C-terminal domain of p21cip1/waf1 protein in proteomic analysis exemplified here suggests that peptides obtained from intracellular functional screens could also potentially serve as efficient baits to discover new drug targets.

Sequence analysis of bovine and porcine collagen type I indicates that some partial sequences are specific for bovine or porcine collagen type I, which can be used as marker peptides for gelatin differentiation. Bovine and porcine gelatins were digested with trypsin. The digest mixtures were analyzed with high performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry ( HPLC/MS ). Marker peptides were identified by the method of peptide sequence tag. The results indicated that the bovine and porcine. gelatins could be differentiated according to the sequences of marker peptides. Further analysis indicated that some prolines in the marker peptides were hydroxylated, which should be taken into account to increase the confidence in peptide identification. The relative abundance of marker peptides in gelatin of different molecular weight range was also investigated. The results indicate that identification of the marker peptides in the digested gelatins by HPLC/MS is an alternative method for differentiation of bovine and porcine gelatins.

Reversed database is popularly used to estimate the confidence level of database searching results from tandem MS data in large-scale proteomic research. However, it is not suitable for the evaluation of PMF (Peptide mass fingerprint) data, which is a classical protein identification approach and generally used still now. In this study, another type of database called “reversed-shift database” is constructed by exchanging the “ K ” or “ R ” amino acid (for the fully tryptic peptides) with their following amino acids, which was demonstrated to be effective for evaluating both tandem MS and PMF data. Reversed-shift processing could avoid the unchanged mass weight of parent ions in the reversed processing for those peptides with the same cleavage site amino acid at the end of peptide and its leading one, which could not be separated by PMF results. Reversed-shift database presents an efficient approach for the evaluation of the large-scale PFF, PMF, and their combined identified results, and should be a powerful tool in the integration of PMF and tandem MS data.

There is considerable interest in the discovery of peptide ligands that bind to protein targets. Discovery of such ligands is usually approached by screening large peptide libraries. However, the individual peptides must be tethered to a tag that preserves their individual identities (e.g., phage display or one-bead one-compound). To overcome this limitation, we have developed a method for screening libraries of label-free peptides for binding to a protein target in solution as a single batch. The screening is based on decreased amide hydrogen exchange by peptides that bind to the target. Hydrogen exchange is measured by mass spectrometry. We demonstrate the approach using a peptide library derived from the Escherichia coli proteome that contained 6664 identifiable features. The library was spiked separately with a peptide spanning the calmodulin binding domain of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS, 494-513) and a peptide spanning the N-terminal 20 residues of bovine ribonuclease A (S peptide). Human calmodulin and bovine ribonuclease S (RNase S) were screened against the library. Using a novel data analysis workflow, we identified the eNOS peptide as the only calmodulin binding peptide and S peptide as the only ribonuclease S binding peptide in the library.

Observed peptide gas-phase fragmentation patterns are a complex function of many variables. To systematically probe this phenomenon, an array of 40 peptides was synthesized for study. The array of sequences was designed to hold certain variables (peptide length) constant and randomize or balance others (peptide amino acid distribution and position). A high-quality tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) data set was acquired for each peptide for all observed charge states on multiple MS instruments, quadrupole-time-of-flight and quadrupole ion trap. The data were analyzed as a function of total charge state and number of mobile protons. Previously known dissociation trends were observed, validating our approach. In addition, the general influence of basic amino acids on dissociation could be determined because, in contrast to the more widely studied tryptic peptides, the amino acids H, K, and R were positionally distributed. Interestingly, our results suggest that cleavage at all basic amino acids is suppressed when a mobile proton is available. Cleavage at H becomes favored only under conditions where a partially mobile proton is present, a caveat to the previously reported trend of enhanced cleavage at H. Finally, all acquired data were used as a benchmark to determine how well these sequences would have been identified in a database search using a common algorithm, Mascot.

Despite significant advances in the identification of known proteins, the analysis of unknown proteins by MS/MS still remains a challenging open problem. Although Klaus Biemann recognized the potential of MS/MS for sequencing of unknown proteins in the 1980s, low throughput Edman degradation followed by cloning still remains the main method to sequence unknown proteins. The automated interpretation of MS/MS spectra has been limited by a focus on individual spectra and has not capitalized on the information contained in spectra of overlapping peptides. Indeed the powerful shotgun DNA sequencing strategies have not been extended to automated protein sequencing. We demonstrate, for the first time, the feasibility of automated shotgun protein sequencing of protein mixtures by utilizing MS/MS spectra of overlapping and possibly modified peptides generated via multiple proteases of different specificities. We validate this approach by generating highly accurate de novo reconstructions of multiple regions of various proteins in western diamondback rattlesnake venom. We further argue that shotgun protein sequencing has the potential to overcome the limitations of current protein sequencing approaches and thus catalyze the otherwise impractical applications of proteomics methodologies in studies of unknown proteins.

A 21-mer peptide that can be used to covalently introduce synthetic molecules into proteins has been developed. Phage-displayed peptide libraries were subjected to reaction-based selection with 1,3-diketones. The peptide was further evolved by addition of a randomized region and reselection for improved binding. The resulting 21-mer peptide had a reactive amino group that formed an enaminone with 1,3-diketone and was used as a tag for labeling of maltose binding protein. Using this peptide tag and 1,3-diketone derivatives, a variety of molecules such as reporter probes and functionalities may be covalently introduced into proteins of interest.

Placement of a tag sequence is usually limited to either terminal end of the target protein, reducing the potential of epitope tags for various labeling applications. The PA tag is a dodecapeptide (GVAMPGAEDDVV) that is recognized by a high-affinity antibody NZ-1. We determined the crystal structure of the PA-tag-NZ-1 complex and found that NZ-1 recognizes a central segment of the PA tag peptide in a tight β-turn configuration, suggesting that it is compatible with the insertion into a loop. This possibility was tested and confirmed using multiple integrin subunits and semaphorin. More specifically, the PA tag can be inserted at multiple locations within the integrin αIIb subunit (encoded by ITGA2B) of the fibrinogen receptor αIIbβ3 integrin (of which the β3 subunit is encoded by ITGB3) without affecting the structural and functional integrity, while maintaining its high affinity for NZ-1. The large choice of the sites for 'epitope grafting' enabled the placement of the PA tag at a location whose accessibility is modulated during the biological action of the receptor. Thus, we succeeded in converting a general anti-tag antibody into a special anti-integrin antibody that can be classified as a ligand-induced binding site antibody.

Axinastatin 3 as a potential anticancer agent was synthesized by chemical methods. In an electrospray ion-trap mass spectrometer, using one stage of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), the linear peptide intermediate was sequenced via the complementarities of y and b ions. Then, using multistep MS/MS (to MS6), the cyclic peptide was sequenced through sequentially removing one amino acid residue in each stage of MS/MS. The difference of the fragmentation mechanisms and the sequencing approaches between them is discussed.

An important but difficult problem in proteomics is the identification of post-translational modifications (PTMs) in a protein. In general, the process of PTM identification by aligning experimental spectra with theoretical spectra from peptides in a peptide database is very time consuming and may lead to high false positive rate. In this paper, we introduce a new approach that is both efficient and effective for blind PTM identification. Our work consists of the following phases. First, we develop a novel tree decomposition based algorithm that can efficiently generate peptide sequence tags (PSTs) from an extended spectrum graph. Sequence tags are selected from all maximum weighted antisymmetric paths in the graph and their reliabilities are evaluated with a score function. An efficient deterministic finite automaton (DFA) based model is then developed to search a peptide database for candidate peptides by using the generated sequence tags. Finally, a point process model—an efficient blind search approach for PTM identification, is applied to report the correct peptide and PTMs if there are any. Our tests on 2657 experimental tandem mass spectra and 2620 experimental spectra with one artificially added PTM show that, in addition to high efficiency, our ab-initio sequence tag selection algorithm achieves better or comparable accuracy to other approaches. Database search results show that the sequence tags of lengths 3 and 4 filter out more than 98.3% and 99.8% peptides respectively when applied to a yeast peptide database. With the dramatically reduced search space, the point process model achieves significant improvement in accuracy as well. Availability: The software is available upon request. Contact: {chunmei,cai}@cs.uga.edu

A method to identify and sequence recombinant mouse acetylcholinesterase (rMoAChE) including the native and organophosphate-modified active-site peptides was developed using capillary liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization, quadrupole/time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Addition of 2-propanol to the reversed-phase gradient system and a decreased gradient slope improved the peptide resolution and the signal of the active-site peptide. The highest protein coverage and active-site peptide signal were achieved when the rMoAChE:chymotrypsin ratio of 5:1 was used with digestion at 37 degrees C. rMoAChE and the active-site peptide were identified and sequenced from chymotryptic digests of native, methyl paraoxon-, and ethyl paraoxon-inactivated rMoAChE showing unequivocally that the exact modification site was the active-site serine.

The N-terminal sequence is important for the identification of a protein and the confirmation of its N-terminal processing. Although mass spectrometry (MS) is a sensitive and high-throughput method to sequence and identify peptides and proteins, N-terminal peptides, diluted among most of the peptides that do not originate at the N-termini, are not easy to identify directly with MS. To develop a simple and rapid method to identify and sequence the N-terminal peptide of a protein, a new strategy based on specific sulfonation of terminal amino groups and selective monitoring of the sulfonated peptide was introduced. After a protein had been guanidinated, 2-sulfobenzoylated, and reduced, it was digested with trypsin and analyzed by MS. Because of the strong acidity of sulfonic groups and the specific sulfonation of alpha-amino groups, the sulfonated N-terminal peptide dominated as base peak in the negative mode peptide mass fingerprint (PMF) and was easy to identify. The N-terminal peptide was then selected as precursor ion for tandem mass spectrometric (MS/MS) analysis. Four proteins were tested with this method and their N-terminal peptides were successfully recognized and sequenced. The results suggest that the addition of a sulfonic acid group facilitates the identification and de novo sequencing of N-terminal peptides.

Proteome science relies on bioinformatics tools to characterize proteins via their proteolytic peptides which are identified via characteristic mass spectra generated after their ions undergo fragmentation in the gas phase within the mass spectrometer. The resulting secondary ion mass spectra are compared with protein sequence databases in order to identify the amino acid sequence. Although these search tools (e.g. SEQUEST, Mascot, X!Tandem, Phenyx) are frequently successful, much is still not understood about the amino acid sequence patterns which promote/protect particular fragmentation pathways, and hence lead to the presence/absence of particular ions from different ion series. In order to advance this area, we have developed a database, PepSeeker (http://nwsr.smith.man.ac.uk/pepseeker), which captures this peptide identification and ion information from proteome experiments. The database currently contains >185 000 peptides and associated database search information. Users may query this resource to retrieve peptide, protein and spectral information based on protein or peptide information, including the amino acid sequence itself represented by regular expressions coupled with ion series information. We believe this database will be useful to proteome researchers wishing to understand gas phase peptide ion chemistry in order to improve peptide identification strategies. Questions can be addressed to ku.ca.retsehcnam@yelles.j.

Sodium ion addition of 20 naturally occurring amino acids was investigated by triple quadruple tandem mass spectrometry. Results showed that most amino acids had extraordinarily weak force for non-covalent binding to sodium ion, while proline and phenylalanine easily captured sodium ion from solvents. By tandem mass spectrometry “sequence docking” method on Q-TOF2 (Waters, USA), full amino acid sequence of C-terminal peptide of acidic fibroblast growth factor was analyzed and it was confirmed that the adding site of sodium ion was proline (6Pro). Sodium ion-addition peaks in peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) apparently decreased after adding 1% formic acid. The peptide sequence without sodium ion-addition and the sequence gap were determined using de novo technology, which was the same as the sequence of sodium ion-addition peptide.

A recombinant peptide (near the C-terminal region of head involution defective protein) of 4.9kDa has been completely sequenced and characterized using medium-resolution mass spectrometry (QTOF). The observed difference in the experimental mass and the theoretical mass is due to b-mercaptoethanol adduct formation on the cysteine residue. The fragmentation pattern is correlated with the primary structure of the protein. Top-down sequencing of the peptide was extended to small proteins like barstar of mass 10.3kDa. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The top-down approach of sequencing and characterizing proteins by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is gaining popularity due to two main technical developments. One is the availability of high-resolution Fourier transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) 1,2 and the other is the electron-capture dissociation (ECD) technique. 3,4 The major advantage of the top-down approach is that performing an MS/MS experiment on intact protein ions makes the entire sequence available for examination. This enables complete characterization of the protein and any associated post-translational modifications (PTMs). 5 Furthermore, the masses of intact

The amino acid sequence of methylamine oxidase (MeAO) from the fungus Aspergillus niger was analyzed using mass spectrometry (MS). First, MeAO was characterized by an accurate molar mass of 72.4 kDa of the monomer measured using MALDI-TOF-MS and by a pI value of 5.8 determined by isoelectric focusing. MALDI-TOF-MS revealed a clear peptide mass fingerprint after tryptic digestion, which did not provide any relevant hit when searched against a nonredundant protein database and was different from that of A. niger amine oxidase AO-I. Tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization coupled to liquid chromatography allowed unambiguous reading of six peptide sequences (11-19 amino acids) and seven sequence tags (4-15 amino acids), which were used for MS BLAST homology searching. MeAO was found to be largely homologous to a hypothetical protein AN7641.2 (EMBL/GenBank protein-accession code EAA61827) from Aspergillus nidulans FGSC A4 with a theoretical molar mass of 76.46 kDa and pI 6.14, which belongs to the superfamily of copper amine oxidases. The protein AN7641.2 is only little homologous to the amine oxidase AO-I (32% identity, 49 % similarity).

Proteins are involved in nearly every aspect of cellular function. In fact, the characterization of proteins has become such a significant part of modern biology, it has inspired a new discipline: proteomics—the classification of the protein complement expressed by the genome of an organism. Technology development has driven, and continues to drive, rapid evolution in this field. Seventeen years ago innovations in biomolecule ionization [electrospray (1) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (2), ESI and MALDI, respectively] placed mass spectrometry (MS) at the forefront of this emerging discipline. Although biological MS was pursued prior to this work, these techniques are generally credited for expanding the field substantially. With these tools, mass spectrometrists could for the first time, easily and robustly, convert condensed phase peptides or even whole proteins to intact gas phase ions.

After tryptic digestion of protein Z a peptide corresponding to residues 1-43 has been isolated and sequenced. Smaller peptides were generated by treatment of the peptide with pepsin and then separated by high-performance liquid chromatography. The purity of the peptides was sufficient for mass spectrometric measurement. Thirteen gamma-carboxyglutamic acid residues have been identified and the peptide shows strong homology to the corresponding domains of the classical vitamin-K-dependent blood clotting proteins.

Peptide mass fingerprinting by MALDI-MS and sequencing by tandem mass spectrometry have evolved into the major methods for identification of proteins following separation by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE or liquid chromatography. One main technological goal of proteome analyses beside high sensitivity and automation was the comprehensive analysis of proteins. Therefore, the protein species level with the essential information on co- and post-translational modifications must be achieved. The power of peptide mass fingerprinting for protein identification was described here, as exemplified by the identification of protein species with high molecular masses (spectrin alpha and beta), low molecular masses (elongation factor EF-TU fragments), splice variants (alpha A crystallin), aggregates with disulfide bridges (alkylhydroperoxide reductase), and phosphorylated proteins (heat shock protein 27). Helpful tools for these analyses were the use of the minimal protein identifier concept and the software program MS-Screener to remove mass peaks assignable to contaminants and neighbor spots.

Almost all large-scale projects in mass spectrometry-based proteomics use trypsin to convert protein mixtures into more readily analyzable peptide populations. When searching peptide fragmentation spectra against sequence databases, potentially matching peptide sequences can be required to conform to tryptic specificity, namely, cleavage exclusively C-terminal to arginine or lysine. In many published reports, however, significant numbers of proteins are identified by non-tryptic peptides. Here we use the sub-parts per million mass accuracy of a new ion trap Fourier transform mass spectrometer to achieve more than a 100-fold increased confidence in peptide identification compared with typical ion trap experiments and show that trypsin cleaves solely C-terminal to arginine and lysine. We find that non-tryptic peptides occur only as the C-terminal peptides of proteins and as breakup products of fully tryptic peptides N-terminal to an internal proline. Simulating lower mass accuracy led to a large number of proteins erroneously identified with non-tryptic peptide hits. Our results indicate that such peptide hits in previous studies should be re-examined and that peptide identification should be based on strict trypsin specificity.