A Novel Method for Creating a Synthetic L-DOPA Proteome and In Vitro Evidence of Incorporation

Joel Ricky Steele; Natalie Strange; Kenneth J Rodgers; Matthew P Padula

doi:10.3390/proteomes9020024

A Novel Method for Creating a Synthetic L-DOPA Proteome and In Vitro Evidence of Incorporation

Proteomes. 2021 May 24;9(2):24. doi: 10.3390/proteomes9020024.

Authors

Joel Ricky Steele^{1

2}, Natalie Strange³, Kenneth J Rodgers², Matthew P Padula¹

Affiliations

¹ Proteomics Core Facility and School of Life Sciences, The University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia.
² Neurotoxin Research Group, School of Life Sciences, The University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia.
³ School of Life Sciences, The University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia.

Abstract

Proteinopathies are protein misfolding diseases that have an underlying factor that affects the conformation of proteoforms. A factor hypothesised to play a role in these diseases is the incorporation of non-protein amino acids into proteins, with a key example being the therapeutic drug levodopa. The presence of levodopa as a protein constituent has been explored in several studies, but it has not been examined in a global proteomic manner. This paper provides a proof-of-concept method for enzymatically creating levodopa-containing proteins using the enzyme tyrosinase and provides spectral evidence of in vitro incorporation in addition to the induction of the unfolded protein response due to levodopa.

Keywords: L-DOPA; Levodopa; PTM; misincorporation; post-translational modifications.