Comparison of data analysis parameters and MS/MS fragmentation techniques for quantitative proteome analysis using isobaric peptide termini labeling (IPTL)

Isobaric peptide termini labeling (IPTL) is a quantification method which permits relative quantification using quantification points distributed throughout the whole tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) spectrum. It is based on the complementary derivatization of peptide termini with different isotopes resulting in isobaric peptides. Here, we use our recently developed software package IsobariQ to investigate how processing and data analysis parameters can improve IPTL data. Deisotoping provided cleaner MS/MS spectra and improved protein identification and quantification. Denoising should be used with caution because it may remove highly regulated ion pairs. An outlier detection algorithm on the ratios within every individual MS/MS spectrum was beneficial in removing false-positive quantification points. MS/MS spectra using IPTL typically contain two peptide series with complementary labels resulting in lower Mascot ion scores than non-labeled equivalent peptides. To avoid this penalty, the two chemical modifications for IPTL were specified as variables including satellite neutral losses of tetradeuterium with positive loss for the heavy isotopes and negative loss for the light isotopes. Thus, the less dominant complementary ion series were not considered for the scoring, which improved the ion scores significantly. In addition, we showed that IPTL was suitable for fragmentation by electron transfer dissociation (ETD) and higher energy collisionally activated dissociation (HCD) besides the already reported collision-induced dissociation (CID). Notably, ETD and HCD data can be identified and quantified using IsobariQ. ETD outperformed CID and HCD only for charge states ≥4+ but yielded in total fewer protein identifications and quantifications. In contrast, the high-resolution information of HCD fragmented peptides provided most identification and quantification results using the same scan speed.     

An experimental approach to enhance precursor ion fragmentation for metabolite identification studies: application of dual collision cells in an orbital trap

Recent advancements in mass spectrometry including data-dependent scanning and high-resolution mass spectrometry have aided metabolite profiling for non-radiolabeled xenobiotics. However, narrowing down a site of metabolism is often limited by the quality of the collision-induced dissociation (CID)-based precursor ion fragmentation. An alternative dissociation technique, higher energy collisional dissociation (HCD), enriches compound fragmentation and yields 'triple-quadrupole-like fragmentation'. Applying HCD along with CID and data-dependent scanning could enhance structural elucidation for small molecules. Liquid chromatography/multi-stage mass spectrometry (LC/MS(n) ) experiments with CID and HCD fragmentation were carried out for commercially available compounds on a hybrid linear ion trap orbital trap mass spectrometer equipped with accurate mass measurement capability. The developed method included stepped normalized collision energy (SNCE) parameters to enhance MS fragmentation without tuning for individual compounds. All the evaluated compounds demonstrated improved fragmentation under HCD as compared with CID. The results suggest that an LC/MS(n) method that incorporated both SNCE HCD- and CID-enabled precursor ion fragmentation afforded comprehensive structural information for the compounds under investigation. A dual collision cell approach was remarkably better than one with only CID MS(n) in an orbital trap. It is evident that such an acquisition method can augment the identification of unknown metabolites in drug discovery by improving fragmentation efficiency of both the parent compound and its putative metabolite(s).     

Peptide and protein quantification using iTRAQ with electron transfer dissociation

Electron transfer dissociation (ETD) has become increasingly used in proteomic analyses due to its complementarity to collision-activated dissociation (CAD) and its ability to sequence peptides with post-translation modifications (PTMs). It was previously unknown, however, whether ETD would be compatible with a commonly employed quantification technique, isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ), since the fragmentation mechanisms and pathways of ETD differ significantly from CAD. We demonstrate here that ETD of iTRAQ labeled peptides produces c- and z -type fragment ions as well as reporter ions that are unique from those produced by CAD. Exact molecular formulas of product ions were determined by ETD fragmentation of iTRAQ-labeled synthetic peptides followed by high mass accuracy orbitrap mass analysis. These experiments revealed that ETD cleavage of the N-C(alpha) bond of the iTRAQ tag results in fragment ions that could be used for quantification. Synthetic peptide work demonstrates that these fragment ions provide up to three channels of quantification and that the quality is similar to that provided by beam-type CAD. Protein standards were used to evaluate peptide and protein quantification of iTRAQ labeling in conjunction with ETD, beam-type CAD, and pulsed Q dissociation (PQD) on a hybrid ion trap-orbitrap mass spectrometer. For reporter ion intensities above a certain threshold all three strategies provided reliable peptide quantification (average error < 10%). Approximately 36%, 8%, and 16% of scans identified fall below this threshold for ETD, HCD, and PQD, respectively. At the protein level, average errors were 2.3%, 1.7%, and 3.6% for ETD, HCD, and PQD, respectively.     

Discrimination Between Peptide O-Sulfo- and O-Phosphotyrosine Residues by Negative Ion Mode Electrospray Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Unambiguous differentiation between isobaric sulfated and phosphorylated tyrosine residues (sTyr and pTyr) of proteins by mass spectrometry is challenging, even using high resolution mass spectrometers. Here we show that upon negative ion mode collision-induced dissociation (CID), pTyr- and sTyr-containing peptides exhibit entirely different modification-specific fragmentation patterns leading to a rapid discrimination between the isobaric covalent modifications using the tandem mass spectral data. This study reveals that the ratio between the relative abundances of [M-H-80](-) and [M-H-98](-) fragment ions in ion-trap CID and higher energy collision dissociation (HCD) spectra of singly deprotonated +80 Da Tyr-peptides can be used as a reliable indication of the Tyr modification group nature. For multiply deprotonated +80 Da Tyr-peptides, CID spectra of sTyr- and pTyr-containing sequences can be readily distinguished based on the presence/absence of the [M-nH-79]((n-1)-) and [M-nH-79-NL]((n-1)-) (n=2, 3) fragment ions (NL=neutral loss).     

Quaternary ammonium isobaric tag for a relative and absolute quantification of peptides

Isobaric labeling quantification of peptides has become a method of choice for mass spectrometry‐based proteomics studies. However, despite of wide variety of commercially available isobaric tags, none of the currently available methods offers significant improvement of sensitivity of detection during MS experiment. Recently, many strategies were applied to increase the ionization efficiency of peptides involving chemical modifications introducing quaternary ammonium fixed charge. Here, we present a novel quaternary ammonium–based isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification of peptides (QAS‐iTRAQ 2‐plex). Upon collisional activation, the new stable benzylic‐type cationic reporter ion is liberated from the tag. Deuterium atoms were used to offset the differential masses of a reporter group. We tested the applicability of QAS‐iTRAQ 2‐plex reagent on a series of model peptides as well as bovine serum albumin tryptic digest. Obtained results suggest usefulness of this isobaric ionization tag for relative and absolute quantification of peptides.     

Application of higher energy collisional dissociation (HCD) to the fragmentation of new DOTA‐based labels and N‐termini DOTA‐labeled peptides

1,4,7,10‐Tetraazacyclododecane‐1,4,7,10‐tetraacetic acid (DOTA) derivatives are applied in quantitative proteomics owing to their ability to react with different functional groups, to harbor lanthanoides and hence their compatibility with molecular and elemental mass spectrometry. The new DOTA derivatives, namely Ln‐MeCAT‐Click and Ln‐DOTA‐Dimedone, allow efficient thiol labeling and targeting sulfenation as an important post‐translational modification, respectively. Quantitative applications require the investigation of fragmentation behavior of these reagents. Therefore, the fragmentation behavior of Ln‐MeCAT‐Click and Ln‐DOTA‐Dimedone was studied using collision‐induced dissociation (CID), infrared multiphoton dissociation (IRMPD) and higher‐energy collision dissociation (HCD) using different energy levels, and the efficiency of reporter ion production was estimated. The efficiency of characteristic fragment formation was in the order IRMPD > HCD (normal energy level) > CID. On the other hand, the application of HCD at high energy levels (HCD@HE; NCE > 250%) resulted in a significant increase in reporter ion production (33–54%). This new strategy was successfully applied to generate label‐specific reporter ions for DOTA amino labeling at the N‐termini and in a quantitative fashion for the estimation of amino:thiol ratio in peptides. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of the activation time effects and the internal energy distributions for the CID,PQD and HCD excitation modes

Reproducibility among different types of excitation modes is a major bottleneck in the field of tandem mass spectrometry library development in metabolomics. In this study, we specifically evaluated the influence of collision voltage and activation time parameters on tandem mass spectrometry spectra for various excitation modes [collision‐induced dissociation (CID), pulsed Q dissociation (PQD) and higher‐energy collision dissociation (HCD)] of Orbitrap‐based instruments. For this purpose, internal energy deposition was probed using an approach based on Rice–Rampserger–Kassel–Marcus modeling with three thermometer compounds of different degree of freedom (69, 228 and 420) and a thermal model. This model treats consecutively the activation and decomposition steps, and the survival precursor ion populations are characterized by truncated Maxwell–Boltzmann internal energy distributions. This study demonstrates that the activation time has a significant impact on MS/MS spectra using the CID and PQD modes. The proposed model seems suitable to describe the multiple collision regime in the PQD and HCD modes. Linear relationships between mean internal energy and collision voltage are shown for the latter modes and the three thermometer molecules. These results suggest that a calibration based on the collision voltage should provide reproducible for PQD, HCD to be compared with CID in tandem in space instruments. However, an important signal loss is observed in PQD excitation mode whatever the mass of the studied compounds, which may affect not only parent ions but also fragment ions depending on the fragmentation parameters. A calibration approach for the CID mode based on the variation of activation time parameter is more appropriate than one based on collision voltage. In fact, the activation time parameter in CID induces a modification of the collisional regime and thus helps control the orientation of the fragmentation pathways (competitive or consecutive dissociations). Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mechanistic insights into intramolecular phosphate group transfer during collision induced dissociation of phosphopeptides

We report on the rearrangement chemistry of model phosphorylated peptides during collision‐induced dissociation (CID), where intramolecular phosphate group transfers are observed from donor to acceptor residues. Such “scrambling” could result in inaccurate modification localization, potentially leading to misidentifications. Systematic studies presented herein provide mechanistic insights for the unusually high phosphate group rearrangements presented some time ago by Reid and coworkers (Proteomics 2013, 13 [6], 964‐973). It is postulated here that a basic residue like histidine can play a key role in mediating the phosphate group transfer by deprotonating the serine acceptor site. The proposed mechanism is consistent with the observation that fast collisional activation by collision‐cell CID and higher‐energy collisional dissociation (HCD) can shut down rearrangement chemistry. Additionally, the rearrangement chemistry is highly dependent on the charge state of the peptide, mirroring previous studies that less rearrangement is observed under mobile proton conditions.     

A tandem quadrupole/time-of-flight mass spectrometer with a matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization source: design and performance

A matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) source has been coupled to a tandem quadrupole/time-of-flight (QqTOF) mass spectrometer by means of a collisional damping interface. Mass resolving power of about 10,000 (FWHM) and accuracy in the range of 10 ppm are observed in both single-MS mode and MS/MS mode. Sub-femtomole sensitivity is obtained in single-MS mode, and a few femtomoles in MS/MS mode. Both peptide mass mapping and collision-induced dissociation (CID) analysis of tryptic peptides can be performed from the same MALDI target. Rapid spectral acquisition (a few seconds per spectrum) can be achieved in both modes, so high throughput protein identification is possible. Some information about fragmentation patterns was obtained from a study of the CID spectra of singly charged peptides from a tryptic digest of E. coli citrate synthase. Reasonably successful automatic sequence prediction (>90%) is possible from the CID spectra of singly charged peptides using the SCIEX Predict Sequence routine. Ion production at pressures near 1 Torr (rather than in vacuum) is found to give reduced metastable fragmentation, particularly for higher mass molecular ions. Copyright 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ion trap MS using high trapping gas pressure enables unequivocal structural analysis of three isobaric compounds in a mixture by using energy‐resolved mass spectrometry and the survival yield technique

Recently, it has been shown that energy‐resolved mass spectrometry (MS) can provide quantitative information from two isomeric or isobaric compounds in mixtures by using the survival yield (SY) technique together with “gas‐phase collisional purification” (GPCP) strategy (Anal. Chem., 2016, 88, p.10821). Herein, we present an improvement and an extension of this concept to the structural analysis of a model mixture of three isobaric compounds (two peptides and a polyether). By using default collision‐induced dissociation (CID) tandem MS parameters on an ion trap instrument, the previous approach did not show any signs of isobaric contamination. However, by modifying CID conditions and using a threefold increase of the He trapping gas pressure (to reach 3.00·10^?5 mbar), the SY curve was unexpectedly and strongly shifted to higher excitation voltages with two plateaus appearing. Those plateaus, indicating clearly the presence of three isobaric compounds, were taken as reliable indicators to perform GPCP at carefully selected excitation voltages in order to selectively fragment one compound after the other. In this way, CID mass spectra of each compound were correctly recovered, both in terms of fragment ion peaks and in terms of relative intensities, from energy‐resolved MSⁿ spectra of the three compounds mixture. This feature enables their unequivocal structural analysis as if samples were free from isobaric interferences. In this paper, we also discuss the possibility for recovering SY curves for pure compounds directly from the mixture. Clearly, in this case, the higher He trapping gas pressure made it possible to use the SY technique, for the first time, for the structural analysis in the case of mixtures of three isobaric compounds. This observation, quite unexpected, demonstrates that the trapping gas pressure is of paramount importance although it is usually not considered in energy‐resolved MS for structural and/or quantitative analysis.     

Tandem mass spectrometric sequence characterization of synthetic thymidine-rich oligonucleotides

Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) can provide direct and accurate sequence characterization of synthetic oligonucleotide drugs, including modified oligonucleotides. Multiple factors can affect oligonucleotide MS/MS sequencing, including the intrinsic properties of oligonucleotides (i.e., nucleotide composition and structural modifications) and instrument parameters associated with the ion activation for fragmentation. In this study, MS/MS sequencing of a thymidine (T)-rich and phosphorothioate (PS)-modified DNA oligonucleotide was investigated using two fragmentation techniques: trap-type collision-induced dissociation (“CID”) and beam-type CID also termed as higher-energy collisional dissociation (“HCD”), preceded by a hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) separation. A low to moderate charge state (−4), which predominated under the optimized HILIC-MS conditions, was selected as the precursor ion for MS/MS analysis. Comparison of the two distinctive ion activation mechanisms on the same precursor demonstrated that HCD was superior to CID in promoting higher sequence coverage and analytical sensitivity in sequence elucidation of T-rich DNA oligonucleotides. Specifically, HCD provided more sequence-defining fragments with higher fragment intensities than CID. Furthermore, the direct comparison between unmodified and PS-modified DNA oligonucleotides demonstrated a loss of MS/MS fragmentation efficiency by PS modification in both CID and HCD approaches, and a resultant reduction in sequence coverage. The deficiency in PS DNA sequence coverage observed with single collision energy HCD, however, was partially recovered by applying HCD with multiple collision energies. Collectively, this work demonstrated that HCD is advantageous to MS/MS sequencing of T-rich PS-modified DNA oligonucleotides.     

Fragmentation methods on the balance: unambiguous top–down mass spectrometric characterization of oxaliplatin–ubiquitin binding sites

The interaction between oxaliplatin and the model protein ubiquitin (Ub) was investigated in a top–down approach by means of high-resolution electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) using diverse tandem mass spectrometric (MS/MS) techniques, including collision-induced dissociation (CID), higher-energy C-trap dissociation (HCD), and electron transfer dissociation (ETD). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that metallodrug–protein adducts were analyzed for the metal-binding site by ETD-MS/MS, which outperformed both CID and HCD in terms of number of identified metallated peptide fragments in the mass spectra and the localization of the binding sites. Only ETD allowed the simultaneous and exact determination of Met1 and His68 residues as binding partners for oxaliplatin. CID-MS/MS experiments were carried out on orbitrap and ion cyclotron resonance (ICR)-FT mass spectrometers and both instruments yielded similar results with respect to number of metallated fragments and the localization of the binding sites. A comparison of the protein secondary structure with the intensities of peptide fragments generated by collisional activation of the [Ub + Pt-(chxn)] adduct [chxn = (1R,2R)-cyclohexanediamine] revealed a correlation with cleavages in solution phase random coil areas, indicating that the N-terminal β-hairpin and α-helix structures are retained in the gas phase.     

Enhanced Performance of Pulsed Q Collision Induced Dissociation-Based Peptide Identification on a Dual-Pressure Linear Ion Trap

Pulsed Q collision induced dissociation (PQD) was introduced for isobaric tag quantification on linear ion traps to circumvent the problem of the low-mass cut-off for collision induced dissociation (CID). Unfortunately, fragmentation efficiency is compromised and PQD has found limited use for identification as well as quantification. We demonstrate that PQD has a comparable peptide identification performance to CID on dual-pressure linear ion traps, opening the potential for wider use of isobaric tag quantification on this new generation of linear ion traps.     

Enhanced Methylarginine Characterization by Post-Translational Modification-Specific Targeted Data Acquisition and Electron-Transfer Dissociation Mass Spectrometry

When localizing protein post-translational modifications (PTMs) using liquid-chromatography (LC)-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), existing implementations are limited by inefficient selection of PTM-carrying peptides for MS/MS, particularly when PTM site occupancy is sub-stoichiometric. The present contribution describes a method by which peptides carrying specific PTMs of interest-in this study, methylarginines-may be selectively targeted for MS/MS: peptide features are extracted from high mass accuracy single-stage MS data, searched against theoretical PTM-carrying peptide masses, and matching features are subjected to targeted data acquisition LC-MS/MS. Using trypsin digested Saccharomyces cerevisiae Npl3, in which evidence is presented for 18 methylarginine sites-17 of which fall within a glycine-arginine-rich (GAR) domain spanning <120 amino acids-it is shown that this approach outperforms conventional data dependent acquisition (DDA): when applied to a complex protein mixture featuring in vivo methylated Npl3, 95% more (P=0.030) methylarginine-carrying peptides are selected for MS/MS than DDA, leading to an 86% increase (P=0.044) in the number of methylated peptides producing Mascot ion scores ≥20 following electron-transfer dissociation (ETD). Notably, significantly more low abundance arginine methylated peptides (maximum ion intensities <6×10(4) cps) are selected for MS/MS using this approach relative to DDA (50% more in a digest of purified in vitro methylated Npl3). It is also demonstrated that relative to collision-induced dissociation (CID), ETD facilitates a 586% increase (P=0.016) in average Mascot ion scores of methylarginine-carrying peptides. The present PTM-specific targeted data acquisition approach, though described using methylarginine, is applicable to any ionizable PTM of known mass.     

Implementing Photodissociation in an Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer

We modified a dual pressure linear ion trap Orbitrap to permit infrared multiphoton dissociation (IRMPD) in the higher energy collisional dissociation (HCD) cell for high resolution analysis. A number of parameters, including the pressures of the C-trap and HCD cell, the radio frequency (rf) amplitude applied to the C-trap, and the HCD DC offset, were evaluated to optimize IRMPD efficiency and maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio. IRMPD was utilized for characterization of phosphopeptides, supercharged peptides, and N-terminal modified peptides, as well as for top-down protein analysis. The high resolution and high mass accuracy capabilities of the Orbitrap analyzer facilitated confident assignment of product ions arising from IRMPD.     

The use of heated capillary dissociation and collision-induced dissociation to determine the strength of noncovalent bonding interactions in gas-phase peptide-cyclodextrin complexes

Complexes of four peptides and permethylated-β-cyclodextrin are produced in the gas phase by using electrospray ionization. The four peptides—bradykinin (BK), des-Arg-1 bradykinin (dR¹BK), des-Arg-9-bradykinin (dR⁹BK), and Gly-5-Gly-8-bradykinin (G⁵G⁸BK)—were chosen because the relative inclusion and protonation sites varied with each peptide. Collision-induced dissociation (CID) was performed to determine the dissociation threshold of the four complexes. Heated capillary dissociation (HCD) was used to determine the dissociation temperatures of the peptide complexes. CID and HCD indicate the same ordering of stability in the complexation of the peptides to the oligosaccharides. Increasing strength of interaction follows the order dR⁹BK < BK < dR¹BK ≈ G⁵G⁸BK. The absence of Arg-9 destabilizes the complex, whereas the absence of Arg-1 stabilizes it relative to BK. Replacing both Phe residues with Gly similarly strengthens the interaction, suggesting that the Phe destabilizes the complex. CID and HCD are useful methods for obtaining relative strengths of interaction in noncovalent bound complexes.     

Sequence Scrambling in Shotgun Proteomics is Negligible

Analysis of 15,897 low-energy (CAD) and 10,878 higher-energy (HCD) collisional dissociation mass spectra of doubly protonated tryptic peptides taken with high resolution revealed that the rate of sequence scrambling due to b-ion cyclization is negligible (<1%) and can be safely ignored as a possible source of erroneous sequence assignment in shotgun proteomics. On the other hand, there is significant presence of normal (non-scrambled) internal fragments in HCD, which should be taken into account by MS/MS search engines.     

Tandem mass spectrometry acquisition approaches to enhance identification of protein-protein interactions using low-energy collision-induced dissociative chemical crosslinking reagents

Chemical crosslinking combined with mass spectrometry is a useful tool for studying the topological organization of multiprotein interactions, but it is technically challenging to identify peptides involved in a crosslink using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) due to the presence of product ions originating from both peptides within the same crosslink. We have previously developed a novel set of collision-induced dissociative chemical crosslinking reagents (CID-CXL reagents) that incorporate a labile bond within the linker which readily dissociates at a single site under low-energy collision-induced dissociation (CID) to enable independent isolation and sequencing of the crosslinked peptides by traditional MS/MS and database searching. Alternative low-energy CID events were developed within the in-source region by increasing the multipole DC offset voltage (ISCID) or within the ion trap by increasing the collisional excitation (ITCID). Both dissociation events, each having their unique advantages, occur without significant backbone fragmentation to the peptides, thus permitting subsequent CID to be applied to these distinct peptide ions for generation of suitable product ion spectra for database searching. Each approach was developed and applied to a chemical crosslinking study involving the N-terminal DNA-binding domain of AbrB (AbrBN), a transition-state regulator in Bacillus subtilis. A total of thirteen unique crosslinks were identified using the ITCID approach which represented a significant improvement over the eight unique crosslinks identified using the ISCID approach. The ability to segregate intrapeptide and interpeptide crosslinks using ITCID represents the first step towards high-throughput analysis of protein-protein crosslinks using our CID-CXL reagents.     

A novel tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer allowing gaseous collisional activation and surface induced dissociation.

A novel tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer is described that enables gaseous collision-induced dissociation (CID) and surface-induced dissociation (SID) experiments. The instrument consists of a commercially available triple quadrupole mass spectrometer connected to an SID region and an additional, orthogonal quadrupole mass analyser. The performance of the instrument was evaluated using leucine-enkephalin, allowing a comparison between CID and SID, and with previous reports of other SID instruments. The reproducibility of SID data was assessed by replicate determinations of the collision energy required for 50% dissociation of leucine-enkephalin; excellent precision was observed (standard deviation of 0.6 eV) though, unexpectedly, the reproducibility of the equivalent figure for CID was superior. Several peptides were analysed using SID in conjunction with liquid secondary-ion mass spectrometry or electrospray; a comparison of the fragmentation of singly protonated peptide ions and the further dissociation of y-type fragments was consistent with the equivalence of the latter fragments to protonated peptides. Few product ions attributable to high-energy cleavages of amino acid side-chains were observed. The SID properties were investigated of a series of peptides differing only in the derivatization of a cysteine residue; similar decomposition efficiencies were observed for all except the cysteic acid analogue, which demonstrated significantly more facile fragmentation.