Mass spectrometric identification of glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored peptides

J Proteome Res. 2013 Oct 4;12(10):4617-26. doi: 10.1021/pr4004807. Epub 2013 Sep 3.

Abstract

Glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchoring is a post-translational modification widely observed among eukaryotic membrane proteins. GPI anchors are attached to proteins via the carboxy-terminus in the outer leaflet of the cell membrane, where GPI-anchored proteins (GPI-APs) perform important functions as coreceptors and enzymes. Precursors of GPI-APs (Pre-GPI-APs) contain a C-terminal hydrophobic sequence that is involved in cleavage of the signal sequence from the protein and addition of the GPI anchor by the transamidase complex. In order to confirm that a given protein contains a GPI anchor, it is essential to identify the C-terminal peptide containing the GPI-anchor modification site (ω-site). Previously, efficient identification of GPI-anchored C-terminal peptides by mass spectrometry has been difficult, in part because of complex structure of the GPI-anchor moiety. We developed a method to experimentally identify GPI-APs and their ω-sites. In this method, a part of GPI-anchor moieties are removed from GPI-anchored peptides using phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC) and aqueous hydrogen fluoride (HF), and peptide sequence is then determined by mass spectrometry. Using this method, we successfully identified 10 GPI-APs and 12 ω-sites in the cultured ovarian adenocarcinoma cells, demonstrating that this method is useful for identifying efficiently GPI-APs.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • GPI-Linked Proteins / chemistry*
  • GPI-Linked Proteins / isolation & purification
  • GPI-Linked Proteins / metabolism
  • Glycosylphosphatidylinositols / chemistry
  • Glycosylphosphatidylinositols / metabolism
  • Humans
  • Membrane Microdomains / metabolism
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Molecular Weight
  • Peptide Fragments / chemistry
  • Peptide Mapping
  • Protein Processing, Post-Translational
  • Proteomics
  • Sphingomyelin Phosphodiesterase / chemistry
  • Sphingomyelin Phosphodiesterase / isolation & purification
  • Sphingomyelin Phosphodiesterase / metabolism
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry / methods*

Substances

  • GPI-Linked Proteins
  • Glycosylphosphatidylinositols
  • Peptide Fragments
  • SMPDL3B protein, human
  • Sphingomyelin Phosphodiesterase