Evaluation of quantitative performance of sequential immobilized metal affinity chromatographic enrichment for phosphopeptides

We evaluated a sequential elution protocol from immobilized metal affinity chromatography (SIMAC) employing gallium-based immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) in conjunction with titanium dioxide-based metal oxide affinity chromatography (MOAC). The quantitative performance of this SIMAC enrichment approach, assessed in terms of repeatability, dynamic range, and linearity, was evaluated using a mixture composed of tryptic peptides from caseins, bovine serum albumin, and phosphopeptide standards. Although our data demonstrate the overall consistent performance of the SIMAC approach under various loading conditions, the results also revealed that the method had limited repeatability and linearity for most phosphopeptides tested, and different phosphopeptides were found to have different linear ranges. These data suggest that, unless additional strategies are used, SIMAC should be regarded as a semiquantitative method when used in large-scale phosphoproteomics studies in complex backgrounds.