A Caveat When Using Alkyl Halides as Tagging Agents to Detect/Quantify Reactive Sulfur Species

Xiaohua Wu; Yuping Xin; Qingda Wang; Yongzhen Xia; Luying Xun; Huaiwei Liu

doi:10.3390/antiox11081583

A Caveat When Using Alkyl Halides as Tagging Agents to Detect/Quantify Reactive Sulfur Species

Antioxidants (Basel). 2022 Aug 16;11(8):1583. doi: 10.3390/antiox11081583.

Authors

Xiaohua Wu¹, Yuping Xin¹, Qingda Wang¹, Yongzhen Xia¹, Luying Xun^{1

2}, Huaiwei Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao 266200, China.
² School of Molecular Biosciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 991647520, USA.

Abstract

Using alkyl halides to tag reactive sulfur species (RSSs) (H₂S, per/polysulfide, and protein-SSH) is an extensively applied approach. The underlying supposition is that, as with thiols, RSS reacts with alkyl halides via a nucleophilic substitution reaction. We found that this supposition is facing a challenge. RSS also initiates a reductive dehalogenation reaction, which generates the reduced unloaded tag and oxidized RSS. Therefore, RSS content in bio-samples might be underestimated, and its species might not be precisely determined when using alkyl halide agents for its analysis. To calculate to the extent of this underestimation, further studies are still required.

Keywords: IAB; RSS; alkyl halides; mBBr.

Grants and funding

2018YFA0901200/National Key R&D Program of China