Organic Solvents for Enhanced Proteolysis of Stable Proteins for Hydrogen-Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry

Anal Chem. 2020 Sep 1;92(17):11553-11557. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c02194. Epub 2020 Aug 12.

Abstract

Protein digestion is a key challenge in mass spectrometry (MS)-based structural proteomics. Although using hydrogen-deuterium exchange kinetics with MS (HDX-MS) to interrogate the high-order structure of proteins is now established, it can be challenging for β-barrel proteins, which are important in cellular transport. These proteins contain a continuous chain of H-bonds that impart stability, causing difficulty in digestion for bottom-up measurements. To overcome this impediment, we tested organic solvents as denaturants during on-line pepsin digestion of soluble β-barrel proteins. We selected green fluorescent protein (GFP), siderocalin (Scn), and retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4) as model proteins and screened six different polar-aprotic and polar-protic solvent combinations to disrupt the H-bonds and hydrophobic interactions holding together the β-sheets. The use of organic solvents improves digestion, generating more peptides from the rigid β-barrel regions, without compromising the ability to predict the retinol binding site on RBP4 when adopting this proteolysis with HDX.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Biomedical Enhancement
  • Deuterium / chemistry
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / chemistry
  • Hydrogen / chemistry
  • Hydrogen Bonding
  • Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange-Mass Spectrometry / methods*
  • Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions
  • Lipocalin-2 / chemistry
  • Pepsin A / metabolism
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Proteolysis
  • Retinol-Binding Proteins, Cellular / chemistry
  • Solvents / chemistry

Substances

  • Lipocalin-2
  • Proteins
  • Retinol-Binding Proteins, Cellular
  • Solvents
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins
  • Hydrogen
  • Deuterium
  • Pepsin A