Multiple coronaviruses have emerged independently in the past 20 years that cause lethal human diseases. Although vaccine development targeting these viruses has been accelerated substantially, there remain patients requiring treatment who cannot be vaccinated or who experience breakthrough infections. Understanding the common host factors necessary for the life cycles of coronaviruses may reveal conserved therapeutic targets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMass-spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics has become indispensable for understanding cellular signaling in complex biological systems. Despite the central role of protein phosphorylation, the field still lacks inexpensive, regenerable, and diverse phosphopeptides with ground-truth phosphorylation positions. Here, we present Iterative Synthetically Phosphorylated Isomers (iSPI), a proteome-scale library of human-derived phosphoserine-containing phosphopeptides that is inexpensive, regenerable, and diverse, with precisely known positions of phosphorylation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile vaccines are vital for preventing COVID-19 infections, it is critical to develop new therapies to treat patients who become infected. Pharmacological targeting of a host factor required for viral replication can suppress viral spread with a low probability of viral mutation leading to resistance. In particular, host kinases are highly druggable targets and a number of conserved coronavirus proteins, notably the nucleoprotein (N), require phosphorylation for full functionality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlia have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis. Variants of the microglia receptor triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) increase AD risk, and activation of disease-associated microglia (DAM) is dependent on TREM2 in mouse models of AD. We surveyed gene-expression changes associated with AD pathology and TREM2 in 5XFAD mice and in human AD by single-nucleus RNA sequencing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA comprehensive view of protein phosphorylation remains an unmet challenge in the field of cell biology. Mass spectrometry-based proteomics is one of the most promising approaches for identifying thousands of phosphorylation events in a single experiment, yet the full breadth of the phosphoproteome has yet to be elucidated. In this article, we examined the complementarity of two methods for phosphopeptide enrichment based on either titanium dioxide (TiO) enrichment or phosphorylation motif-specific immunoaffinity precipitation (IAP) with four different antibodies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile developing a multiplexed phosphotyrosine peptide quantification assay, an unexpected observation was made: significant neutral loss from phosphotyrosine (pY) containing peptides. Using a 2000-member peptide library, we sought to systematically investigate this observation by comparing unlabeled peptides with the two highest-plex isobaric tags (iTRAQ8 and TMT10) across CID, HCD, and ETD fragmentation using high resolution high mass accuracy Orbitrap instrumentation. We found pY peptide neutral loss behavior was consistent with reduced proton mobility, and does not occur during ETD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSystem-wide quantitative analysis of ubiquitylomes has proven to be a valuable tool for elucidating targets and mechanisms of the ubiquitin-driven signaling systems, as well as gaining insights into neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Current mass spectrometry methods for ubiquitylome detection require large amounts of starting material and rely on stochastic data collection to increase replicate analyses. We describe a method compatible with cell line and tissue samples for large-scale quantification of 5,000-9,000 ubiquitylation forms across ten samples simultaneously.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBYL719, which selectively inhibits the alpha isoform of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) catalytic subunit (p110a), is currently in clinical trials for the treatment of solid tumors, especially luminal breast cancers with PIK3CA mutations and/or HER2 amplification. This study reveals that, even among these sensitive cancers, the initial efficacy of p110α inhibition is mitigated by rapid re-accumulation of the PI3K product PIP3 produced by the p110β isoform. Importantly, the reactivation of PI3K mediated by p110β does not invariably restore AKT phosphorylation, demonstrating the limitations of using phospho-AKT as a surrogate to measure PI3K activation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhosphorylation is often used to promote protein ubiquitylation, yet we rarely understand quantitatively how ligase activation and ubiquitin (UB) chain assembly are integrated with phosphoregulation. Here we employ quantitative proteomics and live-cell imaging to dissect individual steps in the PINK1 kinase-PARKIN UB ligase mitochondrial control pathway disrupted in Parkinson's disease. PINK1 plays a dual role by phosphorylating PARKIN on its UB-like domain and poly-UB chains on mitochondria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiplexed isobaric tag based quantitative proteomics and phosphoproteomics strategies can comprehensively analyze drug treatments effects on biological systems. Given the role of mitogen-activated protein/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (MEK) signaling in cancer and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)-dependent diseases, we sought to determine if this pathway could be inhibited safely by examining the downstream molecular consequences. We used a series of tandem mass tag 10-plex experiments to analyze the effect of two MEK inhibitors (GSK1120212 and PD0325901) on three tissues (kidney, liver, and pancreas) from nine mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Cell Proteomics
January 2014
Protein methylation is a common posttranslational modification that mostly occurs on arginine and lysine residues. Arginine methylation has been reported to regulate RNA processing, gene transcription, DNA damage repair, protein translocation, and signal transduction. Lysine methylation is best known to regulate histone function and is involved in epigenetic regulation of gene transcription.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality rate of all female reproductive malignancies. Drug resistance is a major cause of treatment failure and novel therapeutic strategies are urgently needed. MLN4924 is a NEDDylation inhibitor currently under investigation in multiple phase I studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe describe a proteomics approach that identifies antigen-specific antibody sequences directly from circulating polyclonal antibodies in the serum of an immunized animal. The approach involves affinity purification of antibodies with high specific activity and then analyzing digested antibody fractions by nano-flow liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry. High-confidence peptide spectral matches of antibody variable regions are obtained by searching a reference database created by next-generation DNA sequencing of the B-cell immunoglobulin repertoire of the immunized animal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough most tissues in an organism are genetically identical, the biochemistry of each is optimized to fulfill its unique physiological roles, with important consequences for human health and disease. Each tissue's unique physiology requires tightly regulated gene and protein expression coordinated by specialized, phosphorylation-dependent intracellular signaling. To better understand the role of phosphorylation in maintenance of physiological differences among tissues, we performed proteomic and phosphoproteomic characterizations of nine mouse tissues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntramolecular transfer of phosphate during collision-induced dissociation (CID) in ion-trap mass spectrometers has recently been described. Because phosphorylation events are assigned to discrete serine, threonine, and tyrosine residues based on the presence of site-determining ions in MS/MS spectra, phosphate transfer may invalidate or confound site localization in published large-scale phosphorylation data sets. Here, we present evidence for the occurrence of this phenomenon using synthetic phosphopeptide libraries, specifically for doubly charged species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhosphopeptide identification and site determination are major challenges in biomedical MS. Both are affected by frequent and often overwhelming losses of phosphoric acid in ion trap CID fragmentation spectra. These losses are thought to translate into reduced intensities of sequence informative ions and a general decline in the quality of MS/MS spectra.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe eukaryotic cell division cycle is characterized by a sequence of orderly and highly regulated events resulting in the duplication and separation of all cellular material into two newly formed daughter cells. Protein phosphorylation by cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) drives this cycle. To gain further insight into how phosphorylation regulates the cell cycle, we sought to identify proteins whose phosphorylation is cell cycle regulated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProtein phosphorylation is a key regulatory event in most cellular processes and development. Mass spectrometry-based proteomics provides a framework for the large-scale identification and characterization of phosphorylation sites. Here, we used a well-established phosphopeptide enrichment and identification strategy including the combination of strong cation exchange chromatography, immobilized metal affinity chromatography, and high-accuracy mass spectrometry instrumentation to study phosphorylation in developing Drosophila embryos.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo ensure survival in the face of genomic insult, cells have evolved complex mechanisms to respond to DNA damage, termed the DNA damage checkpoint. The serine/threonine kinases ataxia telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) and ATM and Rad3-related (ATR) activate checkpoint signaling by phosphorylating substrate proteins at SQ/TQ motifs. Although some ATM/ATR substrates (Chk1, p53) have been identified, the lack of a more complete list of substrates limits current understanding of checkpoint pathways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProtein phosphorylation is essential for numerous cellular processes. Large-scale profiling of phosphoproteins continues to enhance the depth and speed at which we understand these processes. The development of effective phosphoprotein and peptide enrichment techniques and improvements to mass spectrometric instrumentation have intensified phosphoproteomic research in recent years, leading to unprecedented achievements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProtein phosphorylation is a complex network of signaling and regulatory events that affects virtually every cellular process. Our understanding of the nature of this network as a whole remains limited, largely because of an array of technical challenges in the isolation and high-throughput sequencing of phosphorylated species. In the present work, we demonstrate that a combination of tandem phosphopeptide enrichment methods, high performance MS, and optimized database search/data filtering strategies is a powerful tool for surveying the phosphoproteome.
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