| Abstract: | Cysteine oxidation, either biologically reversible or irreversible, is the main posttranslational modification associated with redox signaling and oxidative stress. Maleimide‐polyethylene glycol (m‐PEG) has been used to detect reversibly oxidized proteins by reacting to the reduced cysteine residues leading to mobility shift in immunoblots; a method called PEG‐switch. With PEG‐switch, both reduced and oxidized proteins can be observed on the same immunoblot simultaneously, providing a simple quantitative measurement for protein thiol modifications. In this report, we optimized the assay conditions and exploited the applications of PEG‐switch in quantitation of the extent of protein thiol oxidation in cells in response to H2O2 and insulin. In addition, we have proposed a redox scoring system for measuring the redox status of any given protein from the m‐PEG immunoblot. Our results provided quantitative data showing that two cysteine residues of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B are prone to oxidation following insulin treatment in cultured HeLa cells. |
