Enhancing the identification of phosphopeptides from putative basophilic kinase substrates using Ti (IV) based IMAC enrichment

Metal and metal oxide chelating-based phosphopeptide enrichment technologies provide powerful tools for the in-depth profiling of phosphoproteomes. One weakness inherent to current enrichment strategies is poor binding of phosphopeptides containing multiple basic residues. The problem is exacerbated when strong cation exchange (SCX) is used for pre-fractionation, as under low pH SCX conditions phosphorylated peptides with multiple basic residues elute with the bulk of the tryptic digest and therefore require more stringent enrichment. Here, we report a systematic evaluation of the characteristics of a novel phosphopeptide enrichment approach based on a combination of low pH SCX and Ti(4+)-immobilized metal ion affinity chromatography (IMAC) comparing it one-to-one with the well established low pH SCX-TiO(2) enrichment method. We also examined the effect of 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoroisopropanol (HFP), trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), or 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid (DHB) in the loading buffer, as it has been hypothesized that high levels of TFA and the perfluorinated solvent HFP improve the enrichment of phosphopeptides containing multiple basic residues. We found that Ti(4+)-IMAC in combination with TFA in the loading buffer, outperformed all other methods tested, enabling the identification of around 5000 unique phosphopeptides containing multiple basic residues from 400 μg of a HeLa cell lysate digest. In comparison, ～ 2000 unique phosphopeptides could be identified by Ti(4+)-IMAC with HFP and close to 3000 by TiO(2). We confirmed, by motif analysis, the basic phosphopeptides enrich the number of putative basophilic kinases substrates. In addition, we performed an experiment using the SCX/Ti(4+)-IMAC methodology alongside the use of collision-induced dissociation (CID), higher energy collision induced dissociation (HCD) and electron transfer dissociation with supplementary activation (ETD) on considerably more complex sample, consisting of a total of 400 μg of triple dimethyl labeled MCF-7 digest. This analysis led to the identification of over 9,000 unique phosphorylation sites. The use of three peptide activation methods confirmed that ETD is best capable of sequencing multiply charged peptides. Collectively, our data show that the combination of SCX and Ti(4+)-IMAC is particularly advantageous for phosphopeptides with multiple basic residues.     

Highly selective enrichment of phosphorylated peptides from peptide mixtures using titanium dioxide microcolumns

Reversible phosphorylation of proteins regulates the majority of all cellular processes, e.g. proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. A fundamental understanding of these biological processes at the molecular level requires characterization of the phosphorylated proteins. Phosphorylation is often substoichiometric, and an enrichment procedure of phosphorylated peptides derived from phosphorylated proteins is a necessary prerequisite for the characterization of such peptides by modern mass spectrometric methods. We report a highly selective enrichment procedure for phosphorylated peptides based on TiO2microcolumns and peptide loading in 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid (DHB). The effect of DHB was a very efficient reduction in the binding of nonphosphorylated peptides to TiO2 while retaining its high binding affinity for phosphorylated peptides. Thus, inclusion of DHB dramatically increased the selectivity of the enrichment of phosphorylated peptides by TiO2. We demonstrated that this new procedure was more selective for binding phosphorylated peptides than IMAC using MALDI mass spectrometry. In addition, we showed that LC-ESI-MSMS was biased toward monophosphorylated peptides, whereas MALDI MS was not. Other substituted aromatic carboxylic acids were also capable of specifically reducing binding of nonphosphorylated peptides, whereas phosphoric acid reduced binding of both phosphorylated and nonphosphorylated peptides. A putative mechanism for this intriguing effect is presented.     

Reference-facilitated phosphoproteomics: fast and reliable phosphopeptide validation by microLC-ESI-Q-TOF MS/MS

Recent advances in instrument control and enrichment procedures have enabled us to quantify large numbers of phosphoproteins and record site-specific phosphorylation events. An intriguing problem that has arisen with these advances is to accurately validate where phosphorylation events occur, if possible, in an automated manner. The problem is difficult because MS/MS spectra of phosphopeptides are generally more complicated than those of unmodified peptides. For large scale studies, the problem is even more evident because phosphorylation sites are based on single peptide identifications in contrast to protein identifications where at least two peptides from the same protein are required for identification. To address this problem we have developed an integrated strategy that increases the reliability and ease for phosphopeptide validation. We have developed an off-line titanium dioxide (TiO(2)) selective phosphopeptide enrichment procedure for crude cell lysates. Following enrichment, half of the phosphopeptide fractionated sample is enzymatically dephosphorylated, after which both samples are subjected to LC-MS/MS. From the resulting MS/MS analyses, the dephosphorylated peptide is used as a reference spectrum against the original phosphopeptide spectrum, in effect generating two peptide spectra for the same amino acid sequence, thereby enhancing the probability of a correct identification. The integrated procedure is summarized as follows: 1) enrichment for phosphopeptides by TiO(2) chromatography, 2) dephosphorylation of half the sample, 3) LC-MS/MS-based analysis of phosphopeptides and corresponding dephosphorylated peptides, 4) comparison of peptide elution profiles before and after dephosphorylation to confirm phosphorylation, and 5) comparison of MS/MS spectra before and after dephosphorylation to validate the phosphopeptide and its phosphorylation site. This phosphopeptide identification represents a major improvement as compared with identifications based only on single MS/MS spectra and probability-based database searches. We investigated an applicability of this method to crude cell lysates and demonstrate its application on the large scale analysis of phosphorylation sites in differentiating mouse myoblast cells.     

Discontinuous pH gradient-mediated separation of TiO2-enriched phosphopeptides

Global profiling of phosphoproteomes has proven to be a great challenge due to the relatively low stoichiometry of protein phosphorylation and poor ionization efficiency in mass spectrometers. Effective, physiologically relevant, phosphoproteome research relies on the efficient phosphopeptide enrichment from complex samples. Immobilized metal affinity chromatography and titanium dioxide chromatography can greatly assist selective phosphopeptide enrichment. However, the complexity of resultant enriched samples is often still high, suggesting that further separation of enriched phosphopeptides is required. We have developed a pH gradient elution technique for enhanced phosphopeptide identification in conjunction with titanium dioxide chromatography. Using this process, we demonstrated its superiority to the traditional “one-pot” strategies for differential protein identification. Our technique generated a highly specific separation of phosphopeptides by an applied pH gradient between 9.2 and 11.3. The most efficient elution range for high-resolution phosphopeptide separation was between pHs 9.2 and 9.4. High-resolution separation of multiply phosphorylated peptides was primarily achieved using elution ranges greater than pH 9.4. Investigation of phosphopeptide sequences identified in each pH fraction indicated that phosphopeptides with phosphorylated residues proximal to acidic residues, including glutamic acid, aspartic acid, and other phosphorylated residues, were preferentially eluted at higher pH values.     

IMAC/TiO(2) enrich for peptide modifications other than phosphorylation: implications for chromatographic choice and database searching in phosphoproteomics

Protein regulation by reversible phosphorylation is fundamental in nature, and large-scale phosphoproteomic analyses are becoming routine in proteomics laboratories. These analyses utilise phosphopeptide separation and enrichment techniques linked to LC-MS/MS. Herein, we report that IMAC and TiO(2) also enrich for non-phosphorylated modified peptides such as acetylated, deamidated and carbamylated peptides. Urea and digestion conditions commonly used in phosphoproteomic workflows are the likely sources of the induced modifications (deamidation and carbamylation) and can easily modify phosphopeptides. Including these variable modifications in database searches increased the total number of identified phosphopeptides by 15%. We also show that strong cation exchange fractionation provides poor resolution of phosphopeptides and actually enriches these alternatively modified peptides. By switching to reverse-phase chromatography, we show a significant improvement in the number of identified phosphopeptides. We recommend that the users of phosphopeptide enrichment strategies avoid using urea as a denaturant and that careful consideration is given to chromatographic conditions and the types of variable modifications used in database searches. Thus, the capacity of IMAC and TiO(2) to enrich phosphopeptides bearing modifications other than phosphorylation is a previously unappreciated property of these chromatographies with practical implications for the field of phosphoproteomics.     

Optimization of phosphopeptide elution conditions in immobilized Fe(III) affinity chromatography

While immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) has been widely used for affinity purification of phosphopeptides, the technique suffers from insufficient specificity. Therefore, there is an urgent need for IMAC optimization to yield the selectivity and sensitivity that is required for more challenging analyses. Recently, 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid (DHB) and phosphoric acid mixture has been reported as an efficient IMAC eluant. The disadvantage of DHB is that is not suitable for electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry. While further developing the IMAC elution protocol to overcome this problem, we noticed that DHB is not necessary and found a novel combination of phosphoric acid and acetonitrile to be more efficient. The purification efficacy of the novel protocol is superior to all previously described methods, while still being compatible with the most commonly used mass-spectrometric techniques in phosphoproteomics.     

Metal oxide-based enrichment combined with gas-phase ion-electron reactions for improved mass spectrometric characterization of protein phosphorylation

Gas-phase ion-electron reactions, including electron capture dissociation (ECD) and electron detachment dissociation (EDD), are advantageous for characterization of protein posttranslational modifications (PTMs), because labile modifications are not lost during the fragmentation process. However, at least two positive charges and relatively abundant precursor ions are required for ECD due to charge reduction and lower fragmentation efficiency compared to conventional gas-phase fragmentation techniques. Both these criteria are difficult to fulfill for phosphopeptides due to their acidic character. The negative ion mode operation of EDD is more compatible with phosphopeptide ionization, but EDD suffers from a fragmentation efficiency even lower than that of ECD. Recently, metal oxides such as ZrO 2 and TiO 2 have been shown to provide selective enrichment of phosphopeptides from proteolytic digests. Here, we utilize this enrichment strategy to improve ECD and EDD of phosphopeptides. This approach allowed determination of the locations of phosphorylation sites in highly acidic, multiply phosphorylated peptides from complex peptide mixtures by ECD. For singly phosphorylated peptides, EDD provided complementary sequence information compared to ECD.     

Single-step inline hydroxyapatite enrichment facilitates identification and quantitation of phosphopeptides from mass-limited proteomes with MudPIT

Herein we report the characterization and optimization of single-step inline enrichment of phosphopeptides directly from small amounts of whole cell and tissue lysates (100-500 μg) using a hydroxyapatite (HAP) microcolumn and Multidimensional Protein Identification Technology (MudPIT). In comparison to a triplicate HILIC-IMAC phosphopeptide enrichment study, ～80% of the phosphopeptides identified using HAP-MudPIT were unique. Similarly, analysis of the consensus phosphorylation motifs between the two enrichment methods illustrates the complementarity of calcium- and iron-based enrichment methods and the higher sensitivity and selectivity of HAP-MudPIT for acidic motifs. We demonstrate how the identification of more multiply phosphorylated peptides from HAP-MudPIT can be used to quantify phosphorylation cooperativity. Through optimization of HAP-MudPIT on a whole cell lysate we routinely achieved identification and quantification of ca. 1000 phosphopeptides from a ～1 h enrichment and 12 h MudPIT analysis on small quantities of material. Finally, we applied this optimized method to identify phosphorylation sites from a mass-limited mouse brain region, the amygdala (200-500 μg), identifying up to 4000 phosphopeptides per run.     

An optimized magnetite microparticle-based phosphopeptide enrichment strategy for identifying multiple phosphorylation sites in an immunoprecipitated protein

To further improve the selectivity and throughput of phosphopeptide analysis for the samples from real-time cell lysates, here we demonstrate a highly efficient method for phosphopeptide enrichment via newly synthesized magnetite microparticles and the concurrent mass spectrometric analysis. The magnetite microparticles show excellent magnetic responsivity and redispersibility for a quick enrichment of those phosphopeptides in solution. The selectivity and sensitivity of magnetite microparticles in phosphopeptide enrichment are first evaluated by a known mixture containing both phosphorylated and nonphosphorylated proteins. Compared with the titanium dioxide-coated magnetic beads commercially available, our magnetite microparticles show a better specificity toward phosphopeptides. The selectively-enriched phosphopeptides from tryptic digests of β-casein can be detected down to 0.4 fmol μl⁻¹, whereas the recovery efficiency is approximately 90% for monophosphopeptides. This magnetite microparticle-based affinity technology with optimized enrichment conditions is then immediately applied to identify all possible phosphorylation sites on a signal protein isolated in real time from a stress-stimulated mammalian cell culture. A large fraction of peptides eluted from the magnetic particle enrichment step were identified and characterized as either single- or multiphosphorylated species by tandem mass spectrometry. With their high efficiency and utility for phosphopeptide enrichment, the magnetite microparticles hold great potential in the phosphoproteomic studies on real-time samples from cell lysates.     

Improved enrichment strategies for phosphorylated peptides on titanium dioxide using methyl esterification and pH gradient elution

Improvements to phosphopeptide enrichment protocols employing titanium dioxide (TiO₂) are described and applied to identification of phosphorylation sites on recombinant human cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2). Titanium dioxide binds phosphopeptides under acidic conditions, and they can be eluted under basic conditions. However, some nonphosphorylated peptides, particularly acidic peptides, bind and elute under these conditions as well. These nonphosphorylated peptides contribute significantly to ion suppression of phosphopeptides and also increase sample complexity. We show here that the conversion of peptide carboxylates to their corresponding methyl esters sharply reduces nonspecific binding, improving the selectivity for phosphopeptides, just as has been reported for immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) columns. We also present evidence that monophosphorylated peptides can be effectively fractionated from multiply phosphorylated peptides, as well as acidic peptides, via stepwise elution from TiO₂ using pH step gradients from pH 8.5 to pH 11.5. These approaches were applied to human CDK2 phosphorylated in vitro by yeast CAK1p in the absence of cyclin. We confirmed phosphorylation at T160, a site previously documented and shown to be necessary for CDK2 activity. However, we also discovered several novel sites of partial phosphorylation at S46, T47, T165, and Y168 when ion-suppressing nonphosphorylated peptides were eliminated using the new protocols.     

Highly robust, automated, and sensitive online TiO2-based phosphoproteomics applied to study endogenous phosphorylation in Drosophila melanogaster

Reversible protein phosphorylation ranks among the most important post-translational modifications, and elucidation of phosphorylation sites is essential to understand the regulation of key cellular processes such as signal transduction. Enrichment of phosphorylated peptides is a prerequisite for successful analysis due to their low stoichiometry, heterogeneity, and low abundance. Enrichment is often performed manually, which is inherently labor-intensive and a major hindrance in large-scale analyses. Automation of the enrichment method would vastly improve reproducibility and thereby facilitate 'high-throughput' phosphoproteomics research. Here, we describe a robust and automated online TiO 2-based two-dimensional chromatographic approach to selectively enrich phosphorylated peptides from digests of complete cellular lysates. We demonstrate method enhancement for both adsorption and desorption of phosphorylated peptides resulting in lower limits of detection. Phosphorylated peptides from a mere 500 attomole tryptic digest of a protein mixture were easily detected. With the combination of strong cation exchange chromatography with the online TiO 2 enrichment, 2152 phosphopeptides were enriched from 250 microg of protein originating for the cell lysate of Drosophila melanogaster S2 cells. This is a 4-fold improvement when compared to an enrichment strategy based solely on strong cation exchange/LC-MS. Phosphopeptide enrichment methods are intrinsically biased against relatively basic phosphopeptides. Analysis of the p I distributions of the enriched/detected phosphopeptides showed that the p I profile resembles that of a total Drosophila protein digest, revealing that the current described online procedure does not discriminate against either more acidic or basic phosphopeptides. However, careful comparison of our new and existing phosphopeptide enrichment techniques also reveal that, like many enrichment techniques, we are still far from comprehensive phosphoproteomics analyses, and we describe several factors that still require to be addressed. Still, as the online approach allows the complementary measurements of phosphopeptides and their nonphosphorylated counterparts in subsequent analyses, this method is well-suited for automated quantitative phosphoproteomics.     

A new acid mix enhances phosphopeptide enrichment on titanium- and zirconium dioxide for mapping of phosphorylation sites on protein complexes

The selective enrichment of phosphorylated peptides prior to reversed-phase separation and mass spectrometric detection significantly improves the analytical results in terms of higher number of detected phosphorylation sites and spectra of higher quality. Metal oxide chromatography (MOC) has been recently described for selective phosphopeptide enrichment (Pinkse et al., 2004 [1]; Larsen et al., 2005 [2]; Kweon and Hakansson, 2006 [3]; Cantin et al., 2007 [4]; Collins et al., 2007 [5]). In the present work we have tested the effect of a modified loading solvent containing a novel acid mix and optimized wash conditions on the efficiency of TiO₂-based phosphopeptide enrichment in order to improve our previously published method (Mazanek et al., 2007 [6]). Applied to a test mixture of synthetic and BSA-derived peptides, the new method showed improved selectivity for phosphopeptides, whilst retaining a high recovery rate. Application of the new enrichment method to digested purified protein complexes resulted in the identification of a significantly higher number of phosphopeptides as compared to the previous method. Additionally, we have compared the performance of TiO₂ and ZrO₂ columns for the isolation and identification of phosphopeptides from purified protein complexes and found that for our test set, both media performed comparably well. In summary, our improved method is highly effective for the enrichment of phosphopeptides from purified protein complexes prior to mass spectrometry, and is suitable for large-scale phosphoproteomic projects that aim to elucidate phosphorylation-dependent cellular processes.     

TiSH - a robust and sensitive global phosphoproteomics strategy employing a combination of TiO(2), SIMAC, and HILIC

Large scale quantitative phosphoproteomics depends upon multidimensional strategies for peptide fractionation, phosphopeptide enrichment, and mass spectrometric analysis. Previously, most robust comprehensive large-scale phosphoproteomics strategies have relied on milligram amounts of protein. We have set up a multi-dimensional phosphoproteomics strategy combining a number of well-established enrichment and fraction methods: An initial TiO(2) phosphopeptide pre-enrichment step is followed by post-fractionation using sequential elution from IMAC (SIMAC) to separate multi- and mono-phosphorylated peptides, and hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) of the mono-phosphorylated peptides (collectively abbreviated "TiSH"). The advantages of the strategy include a high specificity and sample preparation workload reduction due to the TiO(2) pre-enrichment step, as well as low adsorptive losses. We demonstrate the capability of this strategy by quantitative investigation of early interferon-γ signaling in low quantities of insulinoma cells. We identified ~6600 unique phosphopeptides from 300μg of peptides/condition (22 unique phosphopeptides/μg) in a duplex dimethyl labeling experiment, with an enrichment specificity>94%. When doing network analysis of putative phosphorylation changes it could be noted that the identified protein interaction network centered upon proteins known to be affected by the interferon-γ pathway, thereby supporting the utility of this global phosphoproteomics strategy. This strategy thus shows great potential for interrogating signaling networks from low amounts of sample with high sensitivity and specificity.     

Global profiling of phosphopeptides by titania affinity enrichment

Protein phosphorylation is a ubiquitous post-translational modification critical to many cellular processes. Large-scale unbiased characterization of phosphorylation status remains a major technical challenge in proteomics. In the present work, we evaluate and optimize titania-based affinity enrichment for global profiling of phosphopeptides from complex biological mixtures. We demonstrate that inclusion of glutamic acid in the sample loading buffer substantially reduced nonspecific binding of nonphosphorylated peptides to the titania while retaining the high binding affinity for phosphopeptides. The reduction in nonspecific peptide binding enhanced overall phosphopeptide recovery, ranging from 22 to 85%, and led to substantial improvement in large-scale global profiling. In addition, we observed that the overall identification of phosphopeptides was significantly enhanced by neutral loss-triggered MS (3) scans and respective use of multiple charge- and mass-dependent filtering criteria for MS (2) and MS (3) spectra. In conjunction with strong-cation exchange chromatography (SCX) for prefractionation, a total of 4002 distinct phosphopeptides were identified from SKBr3 breast cancer cells at false-positive rates of 3.7% and 5.5%, respectively, for singly and doubly phosphorylated peptides.     

Specific phosphopeptide enrichment with immobilized titanium ion affinity chromatography adsorbent for phosphoproteome analysis

The elucidation of protein post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, remains a challenging analytical task for proteomic studies. Since many of the proteins targeted for phosphorylation are low in abundance and phosphorylation is typically substoichiometric, a prerequisite for their identification is the specific enrichment of phosphopeptide prior to mass spectrometric analysis. Here, we presented a new method termed as immobilized titanium ion affinity chromatography (Ti (4+)-IMAC) for enriching phosphopeptides. A phosphate polymer, which was prepared by direct polymerization of monomers containing phosphate groups, was applied to immobilize Ti (4+) through the chelating interaction between phosphate groups on the polymer and Ti (4+). The resulting Ti (4+)-IMAC resin specifically isolates phosphopeptides from a digest mixture of standard phosphoproteins and nonphosphoprotein (BSA) in a ratio as low as 1:500. Ti (4+)-IMAC was further applied for phosphoproteome analysis of mouse liver. We also compared Ti (4+)-IMAC to other enrichment methods including Fe (3+)-IMAC, Zr (4+)-IMAC, TiO 2 and ZrO 2, and demonstrate superior selectivity and efficiency of Ti (4+)-IMAC for the isolation and enrichment of phosphopeptides. The high specificity and efficiency of phosphopeptide enrichment by Ti (4+)-IMAC mainly resulted from the flexibility of immobilized titanium ion with spacer arm linked to polymer beads as well as the specific interaction between immobilized titanium ion and phosphate group on phosphopeptides.     

Optimization of Immobilized Gallium (III) Ion Affinity Chromatography for Selective Binding and Recovery of Phosphopeptides from Protein Digests

Although widely used in proteomics research for the selective enrichment of phosphopeptides from protein digests, immobilized metal-ion affinity chromatography (IMAC) often suffers from low specificity and differential recovery of peptides carrying different numbers of phosphate groups. By systematically evaluating and optimizing different loading, washing, and elution conditions, we have developed an efficient and highly selective procedure for the enrichment of phosphopeptides using a commercially available gallium(III)-IMAC column (PhosphoProfile, Sigma). Phosphopeptide enrichment using the reagents supplied with the column is incomplete and biased toward the recovery and/or detection of smaller, singly phosphorylated peptides. In contrast, elution with base (0.4 M ammonium hydroxide) gives efficient and balanced recovery of both singly and multiply phosphorylated peptides, while loading peptides in a strong acidic solution (1% trifluoracetic acid) further increases selectivity toward phosphopeptides, with minimal carryover of nonphosphorylated peptides. 2,5-Dihydroxybenzoic acid, a matrix commonly used when analyzing phosphopeptides by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry was also evaluated as an additive in loading and eluting solvents. Elution with 50% acetonitrile containing 20 mg/mL dihydroxybenzoic acid and 1% phosphoric acid gave results similar to those obtained using ammonium hydroxide as the eluent, although the latter showed the highest specificity for phosphorylated peptides.     

Comparison of different IMAC techniques used for enrichment of phosphorylated peptides.

Four commercially available immobilized metal ion affinity chromatography (IMAC) methods for phosphopeptide enrichment were compared using small volumes and concentrations of phosphopeptide mixtures with or without extra-added bovine serum albumin (BSA) nonphosphorylated peptides. Addition of abundant tryptic BSA peptides to the phosphopeptide mixture increases the demand for selective IMAC capture. While SwellGel gallium Discs, IPAC Metal Chelating Resin, and ZipTipMC Pipette Tips allow for the possibility of enriching phosphopeptides, the Gyrolab MALDI IMAC1 also presents the possibility of verifying existing phosphopeptides after a dephosphorylation step. Phosphate-containing peptides are identified through a mass shift between phosphorylated and dephosphorylated spectra of 80 Da (or multiples of 80 Da). This verification is useful if the degree of phosphorylation is low in the sample or if the ionization is unfavorable, which often is the case for phosphopeptides. A peptide mixture in which phosphorylated serine, threonine, and tyrosine were represented was diluted in steps and thereafter enriched using the four different IMAC methods prior to analyses with matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry. The enrichment of phosphopeptides using SwellGel Gallium Discs or Gyrolab MALDI IMAC1 was not significantly affected by the addition of abundant BSA peptides added to the sample mixture, and the achieved detection limits using these techniques were also the lowest. All four of the included phosphopeptides were detected by MALDI-MS only after enrichment using the Gyrolab MALDI IMAC1 compact disc (CD) and detection down to low femtomole levels was possible. Furthermore, selectivity, reproducibility, and detection for a number of other phosphopeptides using the IMAC CD are reported herein. For example, two phosphopeptides sent out in a worldwide survey performed by the Proteomics Research Group (PRG03) of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) were detected and verified by means of the 80 Da mass shift achieved by on-column dephosphorylation.     

Mitochondrial phosphoproteome revealed by an improved IMAC method and MS/MS/MS

IMAC in combination with mass spectrometry is a promising approach for global analysis of protein phosphorylation. Nevertheless this approach suffers from two shortcomings: inadequate efficiency of IMAC and poor fragmentation of phosphopeptides in the mass spectrometer. Here we report optimization of the IMAC procedure using (32)P-labeled tryptic peptides and development of MS/MS/MS (MS3) for identifying phosphopeptide sequences and phosphorylation sites. The improved IMAC method allowed recovery of phosphorylated tryptic peptides up to approximately 77% with only minor retention of unphosphorylated peptides. MS3 led to efficient fragmentation of the peptide backbone in phosphopeptides for sequence assignment. Proteomics of mitochondrial phosphoproteins using the resulting IMAC protocol and MS3 revealed 84 phosphorylation sites in 62 proteins, most of which have not been reported before. These results revealed diverse phosphorylation pathways involved in the regulation of mitochondrial functions. Integration of the optimized batchwise IMAC protocol with MS3 offers a relatively simple and more efficient approach for proteomics of protein phosphorylation.     

Integrating titania enrichment,iTRAQ labeling,and Orbitrap CID‐HCD for global identification and quantitative analysis of phosphopeptides

Recent advances in MS instrumentation and progresses in phosphopeptide enrichment, in conjunction with more powerful data analysis tools, have facilitated unbiased characterization of thousands of site‐specific phosphorylation events. Combined with stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture metabolic labeling, these techniques have made it possible to quantitatively evaluate phosphorylation changes in various physiological states in stable cell lines. However, quantitative phosphoproteomics in primary cells and tissues remains a major technical challenge due to the lack of adequate techniques for accurate quantification. Here, we describe an integrated strategy allowing for large scale quantitative profiling of phosphopeptides in complex biological mixtures. In this technique, the mixture of proteolytic peptides was subjected to phosphopeptide enrichment using a titania affinity column, and the purified phosphopeptides were subsequently labeled with iTRAQ reagents. After further fractionation by strong‐cation exchange, the peptides were analyzed by LC‐MS/MS on an Orbitrap mass spectrometer, which collects CID and high‐energy collisional dissociation (HCD) spectra sequentially for peptide identification and quantitation. We demonstrate that direct phosphopeptide enrichment of protein digests by titania affinity chromatography substantially improves the efficiency and reproducibility of phosphopeptide proteomic analysis and is compatible with downstream iTRAQ labeling. Conditions were optimized for HCD normalized collision energy to balance the overall peptide identification and quantitation using the relative abundances of iTRAQ reporter ions. Using this approach, we were able to identify 3557 distinct phosphopeptides from HeLa cell lysates, of which 2709 were also quantified from HCD scans.     

Specific on-plate enrichment of phosphorylated peptides for direct MALDI-TOF MS analysis

An on-plate specific enrichment method is presented for the direct analysis of peptides phosphorylation. An array of sintered TiO 2 nanoparticle spots was prepared on a stainless steel plate to provide porous substrate with a very large specific surface and durable functions. These spots were used to selectively capture phosphorylated peptides from peptide mixtures, and the immobilized phosphopeptides could then be analyzed directly by MALDI MS after washing away the nonphosphorylated peptides. beta-Casein and protein mixtures were employed as model samples to investigate the selection efficiency. In this strategy, the steps of phosphopeptide capture, purification, and subsequent mass spectrometry analysis are all successfully accomplished on a single target plate, which greatly reduces sample loss and simplifies analytical procedures. The low detection limit, small sample size, and rapid selective entrapment show that this on-plate strategy is promising for online enrichment of phosphopeptides, which is essential for the analysis of minute amount of samples in high-throughput proteome research.