基于共价色谱分离的含半胱氨酸肽段富集策略

多维色谱分离、串联质谱分析技术已在蛋白质组研究中得到广泛应用。然而生物样品的蛋白质以及全酶切肽段具有高度的复杂性,这严重干扰了蛋白质高通量、规模化的分析。通过标签肽段富集进行样品预分离可以降低体系的复杂程度。本文建立了一种基于共价色谱技术选择性分离富集含半胱氨酸肽的方法,从而降低了样品体系的复杂程度。首先以牛血清白蛋白(BSA)的酶切肽段为模型,对富集条件进行了优化和考察,并在此基础上通过5种蛋白质酶切肽段混合物的富集对该方法进行了验证。结果证明此方法的重现性好,富集效率高,富集特异性好,能有效地富集鉴定含半胱氨酸肽段。所建立的方法在复杂体系的蛋白质组研究中具有广泛的应用前景,为复杂样品的蛋白质高通量、自动化、规模化鉴定和定量研究提供了实用技术。

Enrichment strategy of cysteine-containing peptides based on covalent chromatography

Automated multidimensional liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is routinely applied in large scale proteome profiling. However global proteome analysis remains a technical challenge due to the issues associated with sample complexity by tryptic digestion. The application of tag containing peptide enrichment approach for sample pre-separation could reduce the complexity of protein digest. Here, we demonstrated a simple and highly efficient cysteine-containing peptide enrichment method using a thiol specific covalent resin. The cysteine-containing peptides from the tryptic digests of the complex protein mixtures were selected by covalent chromatography based on thiol-disulfide exchange, identified by mass spectrometry. The strategy was firstly optimized and evaluated by using the tryptic peptides of bovine serum albumin (BSA). Then the method was applied with a relatively complicated sample from a five standard protein mixture. The results of these studies show that the enrichment method of cysteine-containing peptides is highly specific, efficient and reproducible. The effectiveness of this method in reducing the sample complexity and improving the identification of peptides by mass spectrometry has enabled high-throughput, automatic and large-scale qualitative and quantitative proteome analyses.