A new H/D exchange- and mass spectrometry-based method for thermodynamic analysis of protein-DNA interactions

Isotopic Depletion Increases the Spatial Resolution of FPOP Top-Down Mass Spectrometry Analysis

Protein radical labeling, like fast photochemical oxidation of proteins (FPOP), coupled to a top-down mass spectrometry (MS) analysis offers an alternative analytical method for probing protein structure or protein interaction with other biomolecules, for instance, proteins and DNA. However, with the increasing mass of studied analytes, the MS/MS spectra become complex and exhibit a low signal-to-noise ratio. Nevertheless, these difficulties may be overcome by protein isotope depletion. Thus, we aimed to use protein isotope depletion to analyze FPOP-oxidized samples by top-down MS analysis. For this purpose, we prepared isotopically natural (IN) and depleted (ID) forms of the FOXO4 DNA binding domain (FOXO4-DBD) and studied the protein-DNA interaction interface with double-stranded DNA, the insulin response element (IRE), after exposing the complex to hydroxyl radicals. As shown by comparing tandem mass spectra of natural and depleted proteins, the ID form increased the signal-to-noise ratio of useful fragment ions, thereby enhancing the sequence coverage by more than 19%. This improvement in the detection of fragment ions enabled us to detect 22 more oxidized residues in the ID samples than in the IN sample. Moreover, less common modifications were detected in the ID sample, including the formation of ketones and lysine carbonylation. Given the higher quality of ID top-down MSMS data set, these results provide more detailed information on the complex formation between transcription factors and DNA-response elements. Therefore, our study highlights the benefits of isotopic depletion for quantitative top-down proteomics. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with the identifier PXD044447.

Studying Protein-DNA Interactions by Hydrogen/Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry

Protein hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) can be used to study interactions of proteins with various ligands, to describe the effects of mutations, or to reveal structural responses of proteins to different experimental conditions. It is often described as a method with virtually no limitations in terms of protein size or sample composition. While this is generally true, there are, however, ligands or buffer components that can significantly complicate the analysis. One such compound, that can make HDX-MS troublesome, is DNA. In this chapter, we will focus on the analysis of protein-DNA interactions, describe the detailed protocol, and point out ways to overcome the complications arising from the presence of DNA.

Intramolecular mode coupling of the isotopomers of water: a non-scalar charge density-derived perspective

Left: The BCP trajectories T(s) for H₂O for the bending (Q1) mode, the axes labels of the trajectory T(s). The green spheres correspond to the bond critical point (BCPs). Right: The corresponding T(s) for H₂O for the symmetric-stretch (Q2) mode.

Energetics-based methods for protein folding and stability measurements

Over the past 15 years, a series of energetics-based techniques have been developed for the thermodynamic analysis of protein folding and stability. These techniques include Stability of Unpurified Proteins from Rates of amide H/D Exchange (SUPREX), pulse proteolysis, Stability of Proteins from Rates of Oxidation (SPROX), slow histidine H/D exchange, lysine amidination, and quantitative cysteine reactivity (QCR). The above techniques, which are the subject of this review, all utilize chemical or enzymatic modification reactions to probe the chemical denaturant- or temperature-induced equilibrium unfolding properties of proteins and protein-ligand complexes. They employ various mass spectrometry-, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE)-, and optical spectroscopy-based readouts that are particularly advantageous for high-throughput and in some cases multiplexed analyses. This has created the opportunity to use protein folding and stability measurements in new applications such as in high-throughput screening projects to identify novel protein ligands and in mode-of-action studies to identify protein targets of a particular ligand.

Thermodynamic analysis of protein-ligand interactions in complex biological mixtures using a shotgun proteomics approach

Shotgun proteomics protocols are widely used for the identification and/or quantitation of proteins in complex biological samples. Described here is a shotgun proteomics protocol that can be used to identify the protein targets of biologically relevant ligands in complex protein mixtures. The protocol combines a quantitative proteomics platform with a covalent modification strategy, termed Stability of Proteins from Rates of Oxidation (SPROX), which utilizes the denaturant dependence of hydrogen peroxide-mediated oxidation of methionine side chains in proteins to assess the thermodynamic properties of proteins and protein-ligand complexes. The quantitative proteomics platform involves the use of isobaric mass tags and a methionine-containing peptide enhancement strategy. The protocol is evaluated in a ligand binding experiment designed to identify the proteins in a yeast cell lysate that bind the well-known enzyme cofactor, β-nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). The protocol is also used to investigate the protein targets of resveratrol, a biologically active ligand with less well-understood protein targets. A known protein target of resveratrol, cytosolic aldehyde dehydrogenase, was identified in addition to six other potential new proteins targets including four that are associated with the protein translation machinery, which has previously been implicated as a target of resveratrol.

HDX-analyzer: a novel package for statistical analysis of protein structure dynamics

Background

HDX mass spectrometry is a powerful platform to probe protein structure dynamics during ligand binding, protein folding, enzyme catalysis, and such. HDX mass spectrometry analysis derives the protein structure dynamics based on the mass increase of a protein of which the backbone protons exchanged with solvent deuterium. Coupled with enzyme digestion and MS/MS analysis, HDX mass spectrometry can be used to study the regional dynamics of protein based on the m/z value or percentage of deuterium incorporation for the digested peptides in the HDX experiments. Various software packages have been developed to analyze HDX mass spectrometry data. Despite the progresses, proper and explicit statistical treatment is still lacking in most of the current HDX mass spectrometry software. In order to address this issue, we have developed the HDXanalyzer for the statistical analysis of HDX mass spectrometry data using R, Python, and RPY2.

Implementation and results

HDXanalyzer package contains three major modules, the data processing module, the statistical analysis module, and the user interface. RPY2 is employed to enable the connection of these three components, where the data processing module is implemented using Python and the statistical analysis module is implemented with R. RPY2 creates a low-level interface for R and allows the effective integration of statistical module for data processing. The data processing module generates the centroid for the peptides in form of m/z value, and the differences of centroids between the peptides derived from apo and ligand-bound protein allow us to evaluate whether the regions have significant changes in structure dynamics or not. Another option of the software is to calculate the deuterium incorporation rate for the comparison. The two types of statistical analyses are Paired Student’s t-test and the linear combination of the intercept for multiple regression and ANCOVA model. The user interface is implemented with wxpython to facilitate the data visualization in graphs and the statistical analysis output presentation. In order to evaluate the software, a previously published xylanase HDX mass spectrometry analysis dataset is processed and presented. The results from the different statistical analysis methods are compared and shown to be similar. The statistical analysis results are overlaid with the three dimensional structure of the protein to highlight the regional structure dynamics changes in the xylanase enzyme.

Conclusion

Statistical analysis provides crucial evaluation of whether a protein region is significantly protected or unprotected during the HDX mass spectrometry studies. Although there are several other available software programs to process HDX experimental data, HDXanalyzer is the first software program to offer multiple statistical methods to evaluate the changes in protein structure dynamics based on HDX mass spectrometry analysis. Moreover, the statistical analysis can be carried out for both m/z value and deuterium incorporation rate. In addition, the software package can be used for the data generated from a wide range of mass spectrometry instruments.

Thermodynamic analysis of a molecular chaperone binding to unfolded protein substrates

Molecular chaperones are a highly diverse group of proteins that recognize and bind unfolded proteins to facilitate protein folding and prevent nonspecific protein aggregation. The mechanisms by which chaperones bind their protein substrates have been studied for decades. However, there are few reports about the affinity of molecular chaperones for their unfolded protein substrates. Thus, little is known about the relative binding affinities of different chaperones and about the relative binding affinities of chaperones for different unfolded protein substrates. Here we describe the application of SUPREX (stability of unpurified proteins from rates of H-D exchange), an H-D exchange and MALDI-based technique, in studying the binding interaction between the molecular chaperone Hsp33 and four different unfolded protein substrates, including citrate synthase, lactate dehydrogenase, malate dehydrogenase, and aldolase. The results of our studies suggest that the cooperativity of the Hsp33 folding-unfolding reaction increases upon binding with denatured protein substrates. This is consistent with the burial of significant hydrophobic surface area in Hsp33 when it interacts with its substrate proteins. The SUPREX-derived K(d) values for Hsp33 complexes with four different substrates were all found to be within the range of 3-300 nM.

A role for the MS analysis of nucleic acids in the post-genomics age

The advances of mass spectrometry in the analysis of nucleic acids have tracked very closely the exciting developments of instrumentation and ancillary technologies, which have taken place over the years. However, their diffusion in the broader life sciences community has been and will be linked to the ever evolving focus of biomedical research and its changing demands. Before the completion of the Human Genome Project, great emphasis was placed on sequencing technologies that could help accomplish this project of exceptional scale. After the publication of the human genome, the emphasis switched toward techniques dedicated to the exploration of sequences not coding for actual protein products, which amount to the vast majority of transcribed elements. The broad range of capabilities offered by mass spectrometry is rapidly advancing this platform to the forefront of the technologies employed for the structure-function investigation of these noncoding elements. Increasing focus on the characterization of functional assemblies and their specific interactions has prompted a re-evaluation of what has been traditionally construed as nucleic acid analysis by mass spectrometry. Inspired by the accelerating expansion of the broader field of nucleic acid research, new applications to fundamental biological studies and drug discovery will help redefine the evolving role of MS-analysis of nucleic acids in the post-genomics age.

Hydrogen/deuterium exchange- and protease digestion-based screening assay for protein-ligand binding detection

A protease digestion strategy was incorporated into single-point stability of unpurified proteins from rates of H/D exchange (SUPREX), which is a hydrogen/deuterium (H/D) exchange- and mass spectrometry-based assay for the detection of protein-ligand binding. Single-point SUPREX is an abbreviated form of SUPREX in which protein-ligand binding interactions are detected by measuring the increase in a protein's thermodynamic stability upon ligand binding. The new protease digestion protocol provides a noteworthy increase in the efficiency of single-point SUPREX because peptide masses can be determined with greater precision than intact protein masses in the matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) readout of single-point SUPREX. The protocol was evaluated in test screens on two model protein systems, including cyclophilin A (CypA) and the minor allele variant of human alanine:glyoxylate aminotransferase (AGTmi). The test screening results obtained on both proteins revealed that the peptide readout of the single-point SUPREX-protease digestion protocol was more efficient than the intact protein readout of the original single-point SUPREX protocol at discriminating hits and nonhits. In addition to this improvement in screening efficiency, the protease digestion strategy described here is expected to significantly increase the generality of the single-point SUPREX assay.

Steroid and protein ligand binding to cytochrome P450 46A1 as assessed by hydrogen-deuterium exchange and mass spectrometry

Cytochrome P450 46A1 (CYP46A1) is a key enzyme responsible for cholesterol elimination from the brain. This P450 can interact with different steroid substrates and protein redox partners. We utilized hydrogen-deuterium (H-D) exchange mass spectrometry for investigating CYP46A1-ligand interactions. First, we tested the applicability of the H-D exchange methodology and assessed the amide proton exchange in substrate-free and cholesterol-sulfate-bound P450. The results showed good correspondence to the available crystal structures and prompted investigation of the CYP46A1 interactions with the two steroid substrates cholesterol and 24S-hydroxycholesterol and the protein redox partner adrenodoxin (Adx). Compared to substrate-free P450, four peptides in cholesterol-bound CYP46A1 (65-80, 109-116, 151-164, and 351-361) and eight peptides in 24S-hydroxycholesterol-bound enzyme (50-64, 65-80, 109-116, 117-125, 129-143, 151-164, 260-270, and 364-373) showed altered deuterium incorporation. Most of these peptides constitute the enzyme active site, whereas the 351-361 peptide is from the region putatively interacting with the redox partner Adx. This also defines the proximal (presumably water) channel that opens in CYP46A1 upon substrate binding. Reciprocal studies of Adx binding to substrate-free and cholesterol-sulfate-bound CYP46A1 revealed changes in the deuteration of the Adx-binding site 144-150 and 351-361 peptides, active site 225-239 and 301-313 peptides, and in the 265-276 peptide, whose functional role is not yet known. The data obtained provide structural insights into how substrate and redox partner binding are coordinated and linked to the hydration of the enzyme active site.

Painting proteins with covalent labels: what's in the picture?

Knowledge about the structural and biophysical properties of proteins when they are free in solution and/or in complexes with other molecules is essential for understanding the biological processes that proteins regulate. Such knowledge is also important to drug discovery efforts, particularly those focused on the development of therapeutic agents with protein targets. In the last decade a variety of different covalent labeling techniques have been used in combination with mass spectrometry to probe the solution-phase structures and biophysical properties of proteins and protein-ligand complexes. Highlighted here are five different mass spectrometry-based covalent labeling strategies including: continuous hydrogen/deuterium (H/D) exchange labeling, hydroxyl radical-mediated footprinting, SUPREX (stability of unpurified proteins from rates of H/D exchange), PLIMSTEX (protein-ligand interaction by mass spectrometry, titration, and H/D exchange), and SPROX (stability of proteins from rates of oxidation). The basic experimental protocols used in each of the above-cited methods are summarized along with the kind of biophysical information they generate. Also discussed are the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different methods for probing the wide range of conformational states that proteins and protein-ligand complexes can adopt when they are in solution.

Throughput and efficiency of a mass spectrometry-based screening assay for protein-ligand binding detection

An H/D exchange- and MALDI mass spectrometry-based screening assay was applied to search for novel ligands that bind to cyclophilin A, a potential therapeutic and diagnostic target in lung cancer. The assay is based on stability of unpurified proteins from rates of H/D exchange (SUPREX), which exploits the H/D exchange properties of amide protons to measure the increase in a protein's thermodynamic stability upon ligand binding in solution. The current study evaluates the throughput and efficiency with which 880 potential ligands from the Prestwick Chemical Library (Illkirch, France) could be screened for binding to cyclophilin A. Screening was performed at a rate of 3 min/ligand using a conventional MALDI mass spectrometer. False positive and false negative rates, based on a set of control data, were as low as 0% and 9%, respectively. Based on the 880-member library screening, a false positive rate of 0% was observed when a two-tier selection strategy was implemented. Although novel ligands for cyclophilin A were not discovered, cyclosporin A, a known ligand to CypA and a blind control in the library, was identified as a hit. We also describe a new strategy to eliminate some of the complications related to back exchange that can arise in screening applications of SUPREX.

Strong anion exchange for studying protein-DNA interactions by H/D exchange mass spectrometry

The use of mass spectrometry to study protein-ligand interactions is expanding into more complex systems including protein-DNA interactions. The excess amount of a model DNA or, more typically, an oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN), needed to study such interactions in an amide hydrogen-deuterium (H/D) exchange experiment, for example, causes serious signal suppression in the protein analysis. We describe here a modification of the traditional H/D exchange protocol whereby we utilize a strong anion exchange column to rapidly remove the ODN from solution before MS analysis. We showed the successful incorporation of such a column in a study of two protein-ODN systems: (1) the DNA-binding domain of human telomeric repeat binding factor 2 with a telomeric oligodeoxynucleotide and (2) thrombin with the thrombin-binding aptamer. The approach gave no appreciable difference in back-exchange compared to a method in which no strong anion exchange (SAX) is used.

Structural and thermodynamic characterization of a cytoplasmic dynein light chain-intermediate chain complex

Cytoplasmic dynein is a microtubule-based motor protein complex that plays important roles in a wide range of fundamental cellular processes, including vesicular transport, mitosis, and cell migration. A single major form of cytoplasmic dynein associates with membranous organelles, mitotic kinetochores, the mitotic and migratory cell cortex, centrosomes, and mRNA complexes. The ability of cytoplasmic dynein to recognize such diverse forms of cargo is thought to be associated with its several accessory subunits, which reside at the base of the molecule. The dynein light chains (LCs) LC8 and TcTex1 form a subcomplex with dynein intermediate chains, and they also interact with numerous protein and ribonucleoprotein partners. This observation has led to the hypothesis that these subunits serve to tether cargo to the dynein motor. Here, we present the structure and a thermodynamic analysis of a complex of LC8 and TcTex1 associated with their intermediate chain scaffold. The intermediate chains effectively block the major putative cargo binding sites within the light chains. These data suggest that, in the dynein complex, the LCs do not bind cargo, in apparent disagreement with a role for LCs in dynein cargo binding interactions.

Molecular recognition by mass spectrometry

A recent major advance in the field of mass spectrometry in the biomolecular sciences is represented by the study of the supramolecular interactions among two or more partners in the gas phase. A great deal of chemistry and most of biochemistry concerns molecular interactions taking place in solution. The electrospray technique, which allows direct sampling from solution, and soft ionization of the solute without deposition into the analyte of large amounts of energy, guarantees in many cases the survival of noncovalent bondings and, hence, the direct analysis of the supramolecular complexes present in the condensed phase. The proper preparation of the solution to be studied and also the expert and accurate setting and use of the instrumental parameters are the prerequisites for gaining results as to the specific interactions between, for instance, a protein conformationally modified by its specific metal ion, eventually, and a ligand molecule. The analysis of the charge state of the protein itself and of the modifications of the complex integrity by activating collisions are also methods for studying the biomolecule-molecule interactions. Accordingly, this new mass spectrometric approach to the supramolecular chemistry, which could be also defined as 'supramolecular mass spectrometry', allows the study of ion-protein, protein-protein, protein-ligand and DNA-drug interactions. Chiral recognition can also be performed in the gas phase, studying by electrospray mass spectrometry the fragmentation of diastereomeric complex ions. Not the least, a deep insight can also be obtained into the formation and nature of inclusion complexes like those formed with crown ethers, cyclodextrins and calixarenes as host molecules. All these topics are treated to a certain extent in this special feature article.