Glycomics and glycoproteomics of membrane proteins and cell-surface receptors: Present trends and future opportunities

Mass spectrometric analysis of the N-glycoproteome in statin-treated liver cells with two lectin-independent chemical enrichment methods

Protein N-glycosylation is essential for mammalian cell survival and is well-known to be involved in many biological processes. Aberrant glycosylation is directly related to human disease including cancer and infectious diseases. Global analysis of protein N-glycosylation will allow a better understanding of protein functions and cellular activities. Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics provides a unique opportunity to site-specifically characterize protein glycosylation on a large scale. Due to the complexity of biological samples, effective enrichment methods are critical prior to MS analysis. Here, we compared two lectin-independent methods to enrich glycopeptides for the global analysis of protein N-glycosylation by MS. The first boronic acid-based enrichment (BA) method benefits from the universal and reversible interactions between boronic acid and sugars; the other method utilizes metabolic labeling and click chemistry (MC) to incorporate a chemical handle into glycoproteins for future affinity enrichment. We comprehensively compared the performance of the two methods in the identification and quantification of glycoproteins in statin-treated liver cells. Based on the current results, the BA method is more universal in enriching glycopeptides, while with the MC method, cell surface glycoproteins were highly enriched, and the quantification results appear to be more dynamic because only the newly-synthesized glycoproteins were analyzed. In addition, we normalized the glycosylation site ratios by the corresponding parent protein ratios to reflect the real modification changes. In combination with MS-based proteomics, effective enrichment methods will vertically advance protein glycosylation research.

Identification of Poly-N-Acetyllactosamine-Carrying Glycoproteins from HL-60 Human Promyelocytic Leukemia Cells Using a Site-Specific Glycome Analysis Method, Glyco-RIDGE

To elucidate the relationship between the protein function and the diversity and heterogeneity of glycans conjugated to the protein, glycosylation sites, glycan variation, and glycan proportions at each site of the glycoprotein must be analyzed. Glycopeptide-based structural analysis technology using mass spectrometry has been developed; however, complicated analyses of complex spectra obtained by multistage fragmentation are necessary, and sensitivity and throughput of the analyses are low. Therefore, we developed a liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (MS)-based glycopeptide analysis method to reveal the site-specific glycome (Glycan heterogeneity-based Relational IDentification of Glycopeptide signals on Elution profile, Glyco-RIDGE). This method used accurate masses and retention times of glycopeptides, without requiring MS2, and could be applied to complex mixtures. To increase the number of identified peptide, fractionation of sample glycopeptides for reduction of sample complexity is required. Therefore, in this study, glycopeptides were fractionated into four fractions by hydrophilic interaction chromatography, and each fraction was analyzed using the Glyco-RIDGE method. As a result, many glycopeptides having long glycans were enriched in the highest hydrophilic fraction. Based on the monosaccharide composition, these glycans were thought to be poly-N-acetyllactosamine (polylactosamine [pLN]), and 31 pLN-carrier proteins were identified in HL-60 cells. Gene ontology enrichment analysis revealed that pLN carriers included many molecules related to signal transduction, receptors, and cell adhesion. Thus, these findings provided important insights into the analysis of the glycoproteome using our novel Glyco-RIDGE method. Graphical Abstract ᅟ.

Simultaneous Quantitation of Glycoprotein Degradation and Synthesis Rates by Integrating Isotope Labeling, Chemical Enrichment, and Multiplexed Proteomics

Protein glycosylation is essential for cell survival and regulates many cellular events. Reversible glycosylation is also dynamic in biological systems. The functions of glycoproteins are regulated by their dynamics to adapt the ever-changing inter- and intracellular environments. Glycans on proteins not only mediate a variety of protein activities, but also creates a steric hindrance for protecting the glycoproteins from degradation by proteases. In this work, a novel strategy integrating isotopic labeling, chemical enrichment and multiplexed proteomics was developed to simultaneously quantify the degradation and synthesis rates of many glycoproteins in human cells. We quantified the synthesis rates of 847 N-glycoproteins and the degradation rates of 704 glycoproteins in biological triplicate experiments, including many important glycoproteins such as CD molecules. Through comparing the synthesis and degradation rates, we found that most proteins have higher synthesis rates since cells are still growing throughout the time course, while a small group of proteins with lower synthesis rates mainly participate in adhesion, locomotion, localization, and signaling. This method can be widely applied in biochemical and biomedical research and provide insights into elucidating glycoprotein functions and the molecular mechanism of many biological events.

Integral membrane proteins: bottom-up, top-down and structural proteomics

INTRODUCTION

Integral membrane proteins and lipids constitute the bilayer membranes that surround cells and sub-cellular compartments, and modulate movements of molecules and information between them. Since membrane protein drug targets represent a disproportionately large segment of the proteome, technical developments need timely review. Areas covered: Publically available resources such as Pubmed were surveyed. Bottom-up proteomics analyses now allow efficient extraction and digestion such that membrane protein coverage is essentially complete, making up around one third of the proteome. However, this coverage relies upon hydrophilic loop regions while transmembrane domains are generally poorly covered in peptide-based strategies. Top-down mass spectrometry where the intact membrane protein is fragmented in the gas phase gives good coverage in transmembrane regions, and membrane fractions are yielding to high-throughput top-down proteomics. Exciting progress in native mass spectrometry of membrane protein complexes is providing insights into subunit stoichiometry and lipid binding, and cross-linking strategies are contributing critical in-vivo information. Expert commentary: It is clear from the literature that integral membrane proteins have yielded to advanced techniques in protein chemistry and mass spectrometry, with applications limited only by the imagination of investigators. Key advances toward translation to the clinic are emphasized.

Global and Site-Specific Analysis Revealing Unexpected and Extensive Protein S-GlcNAcylation in Human Cells

Protein glycosylation is highly diverse and essential for mammalian cell survival. Heterogeneous glycans may be bound to different amino acid residues, forming multiple types of protein glycosylation. In this work, unexpected protein S-GlcNAcylation on cysteine residues was observed to extensively exist in human cells through global and site-specific analysis of protein GlcNAcylation by mass spectrometry. Three independent experiments produced similar results of many cysteine residues bound to N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc). Among well-localized S-GlcNAcylation sites, several motifs with an acidic amino acid around the sites were identified, which strongly suggests that a particular type of enzyme is responsible for this modification. Clustering results show that glycoproteins modified with S-GlcNAc are mainly involved in cell-cell adhesion and gene expression. For the first time, we found that proteins were extensively bound to GlcNAc through the side chains of cysteine residues in human cells, and the current discovery further advances our understanding of protein glycosylation.

Development of IsoTaG, a Chemical Glycoproteomics Technique for Profiling Intact N- and O-Glycopeptides from Whole Cell Proteomes

Protein glycosylation can have an enormous variety of biological consequences, reflecting the molecular diversity encoded in glycan structures. This same structural diversity has imposed major challenges on the development of methods to study the intact glycoproteome. We recently introduced a method termed isotope-targeted glycoproteomics (IsoTaG), which utilizes isotope recoding to characterize azidosugar-labeled glycopeptides bearing fully intact glycans. Here, we describe the broad application of the method to analyze glycoproteomes from a collection of tissue-diverse cell lines. The effort was enabled by a new high-fidelity pattern-searching and glycopeptide validation algorithm termed IsoStamp v2.0, as well as by novel stable isotope probes. Application of the IsoTaG platform to 15 cell lines metabolically labeled with Ac₄GalNAz or Ac₄ManNAz revealed 1375 N- and 2159 O-glycopeptides, variously modified with 74 discrete glycan structures. Glycopeptide-bound glycans observed by IsoTaG were found to be comparable to released N-glycans identified by permethylation analysis. IsoTaG is therefore positioned to enhance structural understanding of the glycoproteome.

LC-MS/MS analysis of permethylated N-glycans facilitating isomeric characterization

The biosynthesis of glycans is a template-free process; hence compositionally identical glycans may contain highly heterogeneous structures. Meanwhile, the functions of glycans in biological processes are significantly influenced by the glycan structure. Structural elucidation of glycans is an essential component of glycobiology. Although NMR is considered the most powerful approach for structural glycan studies, it suffers from low sensitivity and requires highly purified glycans. Although mass spectrometry (MS)-based methods have been applied in numerous glycan structure studies, there are challenges in preserving glycan structure during ionization. Permethylation is an efficient derivatization method that improves glycan structural stability. In this report, permethylated glycans are isomerically separated; thus facilitating structural analysis of a mixture of glycans by LC-MS/MS. Separation by porous graphitic carbon liquid chromatography at high temperatures in conjunction with tandem mass spectrometry (PGC-LC-MS/MS) was utilized for unequivocal characterization of glycan isomers. Glycan fucosylation sites were confidently determined by eliminating fucose rearrangement and assignment of diagnostic ions, achieved by permethylation and PGC-LC at high temperatures, respectively. Assigning monosaccharide residues to specific glycan antennae was also achieved. Galactose linkages were also distinguished from each other by CID/HCD tandem MS. This was attainable because of the different bond energies associated with monosaccharide linkages. Graphical Abstract LC-MS and tandem MS of terminal galactose isomers.

Chemical Glycoproteomics

Chemical tools have accelerated progress in glycoscience, reducing experimental barriers to studying protein glycosylation, the most widespread and complex form of posttranslational modification. For example, chemical glycoproteomics technologies have enabled the identification of specific glycosylation sites and glycan structures that modulate protein function in a number of biological processes. This field is now entering a stage of logarithmic growth, during which chemical innovations combined with mass spectrometry advances could make it possible to fully characterize the human glycoproteome. In this review, we describe the important role that chemical glycoproteomics methods are playing in such efforts. We summarize developments in four key areas: enrichment of glycoproteins and glycopeptides from complex mixtures, emphasizing methods that exploit unique chemical properties of glycans or introduce unnatural functional groups through metabolic labeling and chemoenzymatic tagging; identification of sites of protein glycosylation; targeted glycoproteomics; and functional glycoproteomics, with a focus on probing interactions between glycoproteins and glycan-binding proteins. Our goal with this survey is to provide a foundation on which continued technological advancements can be made to promote further explorations of protein glycosylation.

Isotope-targeted glycoproteomics (IsoTaG) analysis of sialylated N- and O-glycopeptides on an Orbitrap Fusion Tribrid using azido and alkynyl sugars

Protein glycosylation is a post-translational modification (PTM) responsible for many aspects of proteomic diversity and biological regulation. Assignment of intact glycan structures to specific protein attachment sites is a critical step towards elucidating the function encoded in the glycome. Previously, we developed isotope-targeted glycoproteomics (IsoTaG) as a mass-independent mass spectrometry method to characterize azide-labeled intact glycopeptides from complex proteomes. Here, we extend the IsoTaG approach with the use of alkynyl sugars as metabolic labels and employ new probes in analysis of the sialylated glycoproteome from PC-3 cells. Using an Orbitrap Fusion Tribrid mass spectrometer, we identified 699 intact glycopeptides from 192 glycoproteins. These intact glycopeptides represent a total of eight sialylated glycan structures across 126 N- and 576 O-glycopeptides. IsoTaG is therefore an effective platform for identification of intact glycopeptides labeled by alkynyl or azido sugars and will facilitate further studies of the glycoproteome.