基于荧光偏振的高灵敏度蛋白激酶活性分析

利用TiO₂纳米棒与磷酸化肽的特异性相互作用,基于荧光偏振检测,建立了快速、简便的高灵敏度蛋白激酶活性分析方法. 在蛋白激酶催化作用下,荧光标记的肽底物被磷酸化,磷酸化的荧光肽通过磷酸基团特异性结合在TiO₂纳米棒表面,从而使底物肽上标记的荧光分子的旋转速率发生改变,通过对荧光偏振度进行测量,可实现蛋白激酶活性的定量检测,该方法对蛋白激酶A(PKA)的检出限可达0.0004 U·μL^-1. 此外,该方法还成功用于PKA抑制剂H-89的检测,在基于蛋白激酶抑制剂的靶向药物筛选方面具有很好的应用前景.     

基于纳米生物条形码和杂交链式反应构建电化学生物传感器用于蛋白激酶活性分析

该文结合纳米生物条形码和杂交链式反应(HCR)双重信号放大策略构建了一种电化学生物传感器用于蛋白激酶A(PKA)的活性分析。以MoS₂/AuNPs纳米复合材料作为玻碳电极修饰材料，半胱氨酸修饰的底物肽链通过Au-S键自组装到修饰电极表面。当存在目标物PKA时，底物肽链被磷酸化，可与纳米生物条形码(S1-AuNPs-Ab)特异性结合，以S1-AuNPs-Ab探针中S1链作为引发链，可诱导发夹DNA(H1和H2)发生杂交链式反应。HCR产物吸附亚甲基蓝(MB)电活性分子，产生放大的电化学响应信号，实现对PKA活性的定量分析。该电化学传感器检测PKA的线性范围为10^-3～20 U/mL，检出限(S/N=3)为3×10^-4 U/mL。构建的电化学传感器具有良好的选择性、重现性和稳定性，可用于实际样品细胞裂解液中PKA的活性测定和蛋白激酶抑制剂的筛选及激酶相关药物的发现。     

激酶抑制剂的计算机辅助设计

激酶是当今的第二大靶标,其高选择性、强活性抑制剂的开发是医药化学的前沿领域。本文介绍了生物信息学——多序列比对、QSAR、药效团方法、同源模建、高通量虚拟筛选、分子动力学与自由能计算、QM-MM和计算系统生物学等计算机辅助设计方法在激酶抑制剂设计中的重要应用。     

人类蛋白激酶组的多靶点分子对接系统

蛋白激酶在信号转导、基因转录和蛋白翻译等生物过程起关键性作用,因而与大量人类疾病密切相关。所以,蛋白激酶的抑制剂筛选是抗肿瘤药物开发的热点,正在向基于全激酶组的高通量多靶点筛选模式发展。为了降低大规模实验筛选的成本,提高成功率,本文构建人类蛋白激酶组的多靶点分子对接系统,对抑制剂-激酶组的相互作用进行预测。我们首先利用同源模建方法,对人类激酶组约500个激酶变异体的催化域进行结构建模;接着以催化域结构模型为受体,用已知激酶抑制剂进行分子对接,对抑制剂与各激酶变异体的结合亲和力进行了定量计算。结果显示,本文所建立的多靶点分子对接系统可以准确预测抑制剂与激酶变异体的相互作用,结合自由能的计算值与实验值有很强的相关性。所以,该分子对接系统可用于多靶点激酶抑制剂的计算筛选,为激酶抑制剂开发与抗肿瘤药物设计提供理论依据。     

蛋白质组衍生肽段文库用于鉴定酪蛋白激酶2的底物模体

模体是蛋白质二级结构上的一种特征序列,激酶底物通常具有一类特征性的模体,识别底物模体对鉴定激酶底物具有重要意义。为了快速鉴定激酶底物模体,将全细胞蛋白质酶解液作为肽段文库的来源,采用碱性磷酸酶去除肽段的固有磷酸化后构建了用于筛选激酶底物模体的肽段文库。该肽段文库是大量非磷酸化肽段的混合物,将此混合肽段与酪蛋白激酶2和三磷酸腺苷作用30 min后,通过固定化金属离子亲和色谱法富集磷酸化肽段,采用反相液相色谱-串联质谱分析,成功地鉴定到472条非冗余底物肽段,包含451个非冗余磷酸化位点,并由此得到底物模体S/T-D/E-x-D/E。该法能够快速准确地筛选出激酶底物模体,对研究激酶-底物识别以及信号转导过程具有重要意义。     

基于毛细管电泳的天然产物中酶抑制剂筛选研究进展

人类疾病的发生往往与体内各种酶的功能失调密切相关,因此酶一直是目前新药研发的重要靶标。天然产物是发现新药的宝贵资源,但是由于成分复杂,活性筛选一直受制于耗时费力的分离纯化过程。毛细管电泳（CE）技术由于具有样品和试剂消耗少、灵活多样的分离模式且不受样品基质干扰的特点,可以直接从粗提物开始筛选活性成分,在复杂样品活性筛选中显示出独特的优势。该文综述了近十年来CE在天然产物中酶抑制剂筛选的研究进展。其中重点介绍了CE应用于重要药物靶标,包括转移酶（激酶）、水解酶以及氧化还原酶等方面的应用,总结了用于酶抑制剂筛选的电泳分离模式和酶动力学研究,并展望了CE用于天然产物中活性成分筛选的应用前景。     

基于流式微球分析技术的超高灵敏度蛋白激酶活性分析

蛋白激酶引发的蛋白质磷酸化在细胞信号转导过程中发挥着极其重要的调控作用。研究表明,众多的人类疾病和蛋白激酶的活性异常密切相关,蛋白激酶也因而成为治疗癌症、炎症和其它免疫调控紊乱等复杂性疾病的重要药物靶点,开发、筛选小分子蛋白激酶活性抑制剂是当前新药研发的重要方向。因此,建立操作简单、成本低廉、灵敏度高的蛋白激酶活性检测方法是实现以蛋白激酶为靶点进行疾病诊断及新药开发的先决条件。传统激酶活性分析方法主要是依赖放射性32P标记或对特定磷酸化     

蛋白酪氨酸激酶小分子抑制剂的研究新进展

酪氨酸激酶在细胞的恶性生长和增殖中起着非常重要的作用,发展选择性的蛋白激酶抑制剂来阻断或调控由于这些信号通路异常产生的疾病已被广泛认为是抗肿瘤药物开发的一个富有前景和有效的研究策略.近年来科学家在蛋白酪氨酸激酶抑制剂这一领域进行了大量的工作,合成了数百个受体型或者非受体型酪氨酸激酶抑制剂,其中8个小分子抑制剂被美国食品药品管理局(FDA)批准作为抗肿瘤药物进入临床使用.随着肿瘤多重耐药性的出现,新机理的小分子酪氨酸激酶抑制剂被不断探索.以小分子抑制剂与酪氨酸激酶小同的作用模式来进行分类,系统地阐述了小分子酪氨酸激酶抑制剂的研究进展和发展趋势,并对代表性化合物的合成进行了介绍.     

介孔氧化铁材料快速、高效富集分离磷酸化肽段和蛋白的新方法研究

以0.1μmol/Lβ-casein磷酸化蛋白酶解液为对象,利用在酸性条件下对PO43-能够特异性吸附的氧化铁材料为新载体,对介孔氧化铁材料富集分离磷酸化肽段的孵育液酸含量、孵育液有机溶剂含量和洗脱液选择的条件进行了优化,结果表明:室温条件下,在含有0.1%乙酸和30%乙腈的孵育液中孵育5min后,经1mol/LNH3.H2O溶液的洗脱,介孔氧化铁可有效地将磷酸化肽段从蛋白酶解液中富集分离。本方法也可以选择性地提取α-casein磷酸化蛋白,实现了简单、快速、高效的磷酸化肽段和蛋白的富集分离。同时,通过MALDI-TOF串级质谱分析,成功地完成了在优化条件下分离出的磷酸化肽段磷酸位点的鉴定。     

GSK-3抑制剂研究进展

糖原合成酶激酶-3 (Glycogen synthase kinase-3, GSK-3)是一个多功能的丝氨酸/苏氨酸蛋白激酶,不仅参与肝糖代谢过程,而且还参与Wnt和Hedgehog信号通路,通过磷酸化多种底物蛋白来调节细胞的生理过程。GSK-3抑制剂作为目前倍受关注的小分子抑制剂,对治疗神经退化性疾病,癌症,II型糖尿病具有潜在的疗效。本文针对已开发出的GSK-3抑制剂,对其结构,与蛋白的作用模式以及构效关系进行阐述,为进一步设计合理的药物先导化合物和特异性小分子化学探针提供有益的启示。     

High-throughput screening of kinase inhibitors by multiplex capillary electrophoresis with UV absorption detection

Protein kinases play a major role in the transformation of cells and are often used as molecular targets for the new generation of anticancer drugs. We present a novel technique for high-throughput screening of inhibitors of protein kinases. The technique involves the use of multiplexed capillary electrophoresis (CE) for the rapid separation of the peptides, phosphopeptides, and various inhibitors. By means of UV detection, diversified peptides with native amino acid sequences and their phosphorylated counterparts can be directly analyzed without the need for radioactive or fluorescence labeling. The effects of different inhibitors and their IC(50) value were determined using three different situations involving the use of a single purified kinase, two purified kinases, and crude cell extracts, respectively. The results suggest that multiplexed CE/UV may prove to be a straightforward and general approach for high-throughput screening of compound libraries to find potent and selective inhibitors of the various protein kinases.     

A CIEF‐LIF method for simultaneous analysis of multiple protein kinases and screening of inhibitors

Here, a CIEF‐LIF method for multiple protein kinase simultaneous analysis and inhibitors throughput screening with fast rate and low cost is presented. Comparing with CZE, CIEF‐LIF exhibited great focusing ability and high separation efficiency for substrate and phosphorylated peptides, and is applicable for multiple kinases simultaneous analysis regardless of their substrate peptides compositions and charge statuses. Thus, highly sensitive analysis for cyclic adenosine 3’, 5’‐monophosphate‐dependent protein kinase (PKA) and cyclin‐dependent kinase 1 (CDK1) was achieved in CIEF‐LIF analysis with detection sensitivity up to 1.25 mU/μL and 0.4 mU/μL, respectively, two magnitudes higher than that of CZE and comparable with that in nanomaterials or green fluorescent protein‐based kinase assay. Moreover, the inhibition effect of inhibitors on multiple kinases could be simultaneously readout in a single electrophoretic run, with half maximal inhibitory concentration of H‐89 for PKA and Ro‐3306 for CDK1 calculated as 37.0 and 35.9 nM, respectively, consistent with literatures reported. The CIEF‐LIF also exhibited strong anti‐interference ability in human breast cancer cell lysates analysis and simulators such as forskolin and 3‐isobutyl‐1‐methylxantine assessment. Therefore, CIEF‐LIF is desirable for future biological application and clinical diagnostics and drug discovery.     

Combining microfluidic networks and peptide arrays for multi-enzyme assays

This paper reports the use of microfluidic networks (muFNs) to both prepare peptide microarrays and carry out label-free enzyme assays on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiolates on gold. A poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) stamp fabricated with microchannels is used to immobilize a linear array of cysteine-terminated peptides onto SAMs presenting maleimide groups. The stamp is then reapplied to the SAM in a perpendicular direction to introduce enzyme solutions so that each solution can interact with an identical linear array of immobilized peptides. The muFNs enable multiple enzyme-substrate interactions to be simultaneously evaluated at a submicroliter scale, while the use of SAMs enables the use of MALDI mass spectrometry (MS) to analyze the enzyme activities. This paper demonstrates applications of this system for assaying multiple kinases and for profiling the activities of kinases and phosphatases in human K562 cell extracts. The combination of muFN, SAMs, and MS detection provides a flexible platform for assaying enzyme activities in biological samples.     

Aromatic Rings as Molecular Determinants for the Molecular Recognition of Protein Kinase Inhibitors

Protein kinases are key enzymes in many signal transduction pathways, and play a crucial role in cellular proliferation, differentiation, and various cell regulatory processes. However, aberrant function of kinases has been associated with cancers and many other diseases. Consequently, competitive inhibition of the ATP binding site of protein kinases has emerged as an effective means of curing these diseases. Over the past three decades, thousands of protein kinase inhibitors (PKIs) with varying molecular frames have been developed. Large-scale data mining of the Protein Data Bank resulted in a database of 2139 non-redundant high-resolution X-ray crystal structures of PKIs bound to protein kinases. This provided us with a unique opportunity to study molecular determinants for the molecular recognition of PKIs. A chemoinformatic analysis of 2139 PKIs resulted in findings that PKIs are “flat” molecules with high aromatic ring counts and low fractions of sp³ carbon. All but one PKI possessed one or more aromatic rings. More importantly, it was found that the average weighted hydrogen bond count is inversely proportional to the number of aromatic rings. Based on this linear relationship, we put forward the exchange rule of hydrogen bonding interactions and non-bonded π-interactions. Specifically, a loss of binding affinity caused by a decrease in hydrogen bonding interactions is compensated by a gain in binding affinity acquired by an increase in aromatic ring-originated non-bonded interactions (i.e., π–π stacking interactions, CH–π interactions, cation–π interactions, etc.), and vice versa. The very existence of this inverse relationship strongly suggests that both hydrogen bonding and aromatic ring-originated non-bonded interactions are responsible for the molecular recognition of PKIs. As an illustration, two representative PKI–kinase complexes were employed to examine the relative importance of different modes of non-bonded interactions for the molecular recognition of PKIs. For this purpose, two FDA-approved PKI drugs, ibrutinib and lenvatinib, were chosen. The binding pockets of both PKIs were thoroughly examined to identify all non-bonded intermolecular interactions. Subsequently, the strengths of interaction energies between ibrutinib and its interacting residues in tyrosine kinase BTK were quantified by means of the double hybrid DFT method B2PLYP. The resulting energetics for the binding of ibrutinib in tyrosine kinase BTK showed that CH–π interactions and π–π stacking interactions between aromatic rings of the drug and hydrophobic residues in its binding pocket dominate the binding interactions. Thus, this work establishes that, in addition to hydrogen bonding, aromatic rings function as important molecular determinants for the molecular recognition of PKIs. In conclusion, our findings support the following pharmacophore model for ATP-competitive kinase inhibitors: a small molecule features a scaffold of one or more aromatic rings which is linked with one or more hydrophilic functional groups. The former has the structural role of acting as a scaffold and the functional role of participating in aromatic ring-originated non-bonded interactions with multiple hydrophobic regions in the ATP binding pocket of kinases. The latter ensure water solubility and form hydrogen bonds with the hinge region and other hydrophilic residues of the ATP binding pocket.     

Screening for Protein Phosphorylation Using Nanoscale Reactions on Microdroplet Arrays

We present a novel and straightforward screening method to detect protein phosphorylations in complex protein mixtures. A proteolytic digest is separated by a conventional nanoscale liquid chromatography (nano‐LC) separation and the eluate is immediately compartmentalized into microdroplets, which are spotted on a microarray MALDI plate. Subsequently, the enzyme alkaline phosphatase is applied to every second microarray spot to remove the phosphate groups from phosphorylated peptides, which results in a mass shift of n×?80 Da. The MALDI‐MS scan of the microarray is then evaluated by a software algorithm to automatically identify the phosphorylated peptides by exploiting the characteristic chromatographic peak profile induced by the phosphatase treatment. This screening method does not require extensive MS/MS experiments or peak list evaluation and can be easily extended to other enzymatic or chemical reactions.     

Metal cations for the determination of fluorescent phosphoinositides by capillary electrophoresis

Phosphatidylinositol (PI) and its phosphorylated derivatives known as phosphoinositides (PIPs), are essential regulators of cell signaling and membrane trafficking, cytoskeletal dynamics, and nuclear functions. Disruption of PI metabolism is associated with disorders such as immune dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, and cancer; therefore, there is currently great interest in studying PIPs and their metabolic enzymes. Here, we describe a method for the separation of fluorescent PI and its seven fluorescent phosphorylated derivatives by CE‐LIF. The CE method utilizes a Tris buffer and sodium deoxycholate in the presence of 30% 1‐propanol and 5% of a dynamic coating reagent, EOTrol^TM low reverse (EOTrol LR). It is simple, fast, highly sensitive, and it offers LODs in the order of 1.5 amol. The effect of cations such as lithium, sodium, potassium, cesium, barium, manganese, zinc, magnesium, calcium, spermine, and gentamicin were evaluated. Calcium and magnesium provided the best selectivity and resolution for the separation of the analytes while magnesium offered the best data reproducibility. The developed CE method would be useful in the studies of enzymatic activity in the PI and PIPs metabolic pathways using CE‐based in vitro and CE cell‐based assays, and/or for drug screening.     

Measurement of cdk4 kinase activity using an affinity peptide-tagging technology

Cyclin-dependent kinases such as Cdk4 are involved in the control of cell cycle progression, and misregulation of Cdk4 has been implicated in many types of cancers. In the present study, we report the development of a novel homogeneous assay using an affinity peptide-tagging technology for rapidly discovering Cdk4 inhibitors. The DNA sequence encoding a streptavidin recognition motif, or StrepTag (AWRHPQFGG), was cloned and expressed at the C-terminus of a fusion protein of a 152-amino acid hyperphosphorylation domain (Rb152) of the retinoblastoma protein (Rb) linked to GST at the N-terminus. This affinity peptide-tagged protein (GST-Rb152-StrepTag), which contains the two known phosphorylation sites of Rb, specifically phosphorylated by Cdk4 in vivo, was used as a substrate in the current in vitro kinase assay. After phosphorylation, scintillation proximity assay (SPA) scintillant beads coated with streptavidin were added. Radiolabeled GST-Rb152-StrepTag was brought in close proximity to the SPA scintillant beads through the interaction between StrepTag and streptavidin, resulting in the emission of light from beads. By applying the affinity peptide-tagging technology, we have eliminated the separation and wash steps which are normally required in a radioactive filtration assay. Therefore, this homogeneous method is simple, robust, and highly amenable to high-throughput screening of Cdk4-specific inhibitors. Furthermore, the affinity peptide tagging technique reported here is a simple, generic method that can be applied to many recombinant proteins for the development of kinase and protein-protein interaction assays.     

Development of a fast and efficient CE enzyme assay for the characterization and inhibition studies of α‐glucosidase inhibitors

The inhibition of the α‐glucosidase enzyme plays an important role in the treatment of diabetes mellitus. We have established a highly sensitive, fast, and convenient CE method for the characterization of the enzyme and inhibition studies of α‐glucosidase inhibitors. The separation conditions were optimized; the pH value and concentration of the borate‐based separation buffer were optimized in order to achieve baseline separation of p‐nitrophenyl‐α‐d ‐glucopyranoside and p‐nitrophenolate. The optimized method using 25 mM tetraborate buffer, pH 9.5, was evaluated in terms of repeatability, LOD, LOQ, and linearity. The LOD and LOQ were 0.32 and 1.32 μM for p‐nitrophenyl‐α‐d ‐glucopyranoside and 0.83 and 3.42 μM for p‐nitrophenolate, respectively. The value of the Michaelis–Menten constant (K_m) determined for the enzyme is 0.61 mM, which is in good agreement with the reported data. The RSDs (n = 6) for the migration time was 0.67 and 1.83% for substrate and product, respectively. In the newly established CE method, the separation of the reaction analytes was completed in <4 min. The developed CE method is rapid and simple for measuring enzyme kinetics and for assaying inhibitors.     

A quantitative CE method to analyse tau protein isoforms using coated fused silica capillaries

We evaluated the potential of CE to analyse different isoforms of unphosphorylated recombinant tau protein and for separating one phosphorylated tau from the respective unphosphorylated protein. Different capillary coatings such as polyacrylamide, poly‐(ethylene oxide) and polybrene (PB) were evaluated to overcome the poor efficiencies obtained with fused‐silica capillary. Although peak asymmetry values were quite similar for the three investigated coatings, the peak efficiencies were 35‐fold and 5‐fold higher with PB coating than with polyacrylamide and poly(ethylene oxide) coatings, respectively. The recovery percentage (over 97%) was satisfactory and confirmed the efficacy of PB coating to limit the adsorption of tau protein to capillary walls. Moreover, PB coating produced higher repeatability for migration times (RSD values <1.2%) in comparison to the neutral coatings. The potential of PB‐modified capillary in producing high resolutive separations of one phosphorylated tau isoform from its unphosphorylated counterpart and of a mixture of phosphorylated and unphosphorylated tau peptides was demonstrated with 50 mM phosphate buffer pH 3.0. The separation of unphosphorylated tau isoform 352 (Tau‐352) from Tau‐352 phosphorylated in vitro by the mitogen‐activated protein kinase ERK2, was accomplished in less than 15 min.