Detection of Protein Ubiquitination Sites by Peptide Enrichment and Mass Spectrometry

Summary

We present a method for the purification, detection, and identification of diGly peptides that originate from ubiquitinated proteins from complex biological samples. The presented method is reproducible, robust, and outperforms published methods with respect to the level of depth of the ubiquitinome analysis.

Abstract

The posttranslational modification of proteins by the small protein ubiquitin is involved in many cellular events. After tryptic digestion of ubiquitinated proteins, peptides with a diglycine remnant conjugated to the epsilon amino group of lysine ('K-ε-diglycine' or simply 'diGly') can be used to track back the original modification site. Efficient immunopurification of diGly peptides combined with sensitive detection by mass spectrometry has resulted in a huge increase in the number of ubiquitination sites identified up to date. We have made several improvements to this workflow, including offline high pH reverse-phase fractionation of peptides prior to the enrichment procedure, and the inclusion of more advanced peptide fragmentation settings in the ion routing multipole. Also, more efficient cleanup of the sample using a filter-based plug in order to retain the antibody beads results in a greater specificity for diGly peptides. These improvements result in the routine detection of more than 23,000 diGly peptides from human cervical cancer cells (HeLa) cell lysates upon proteasome inhibition in the cell. We show the efficacy of this strategy for in-depth analysis of the ubiquitinome profiles of several different cell types and of in vivo samples, such as brain tissue. This study presents an original addition to the toolbox for protein ubiquitination analysis to uncover the deep cellular ubiquitinome.

Introduction

The conjugation of ubiquitin to proteins marks them for degradation by the proteasome and is a crucial process in proteostasis. The C-terminal carboxyl group of ubiquitin forms an isopeptide bond with the lysine ε-amino group of the target protein^1,2. In addition, ubiquitin can be attached to other ubiquitin modules, resulting in the formation of homogeneous (i.e., K48 or K11) or branched (i.e., heterogeneous or mixed) polyubiquitin structures^1,3. The most well-known function of ubiquitin is its role in proteasomal degradation, mediated by K48-lin....

Protocol

All methods described here have been approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (EDC) of Erasmus MC.

1. Sample preparation

1. Cultured cells
   1. Select a cell line of interest (e.g., HeLa or osteosarcoma [U2OS] cells) and grow the cells in Dulbecco's Minimal Eagle Medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% heat inactivated fetal bovine serum (FBS) and 100 units/mL penicillin/streptomycin.
   2. For quantitative proteomics experiments, culture cells in DMEM lacking arginine and lysine. The medium must be supplemented with 10% dialyzed fetal bovine serum (FBS), 100 units/mL penicillin/streptomycin, and alan....

Discussion

The protocol described here was applied to samples from various biological sources, such as cultured cells and in vivo tissue. In all cases we identified thousands of diGly peptides, provided that the total protein input amount was at least 1 mg. The enrichment using specific antibodies is highly efficient, given that only at most 100-150 very low abundant diGly peptides were identified from whole cell lysates if no enrichment procedures for ubiquitinated proteins or diGly peptides were applied. Obviously, sensitive mass.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
1,4-Dithioerythritol	Sigma-Aldrich	D8255
3M Empore C18 Octadecyl disks	Supelco	66883-U	product discontinued at Supelco; CDS Analytical is the new manufacturer (https://www.cdsanalytical.com/empore)
Ammonium formate	Sigma-Aldrich	70221
Bortezomib	UBPbio
CSH130 resin, 3.5 μm, 130 Å	Waters
Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO)	Sigma-Aldrich	34869
DMEM	ThermoFisher
EASY-nanoLC 1200	ThermoFisher
FBS	Gibco
GF/F filter plug	Whatman	1825-021
Iodoacetamide	Sigma-Aldrich	I6125
Lysine, Arginine	Sigma-Aldrich
Lysine-8 (13C6;15N2), Arginine-10 (13C6;15N4)	Cambridge Isotope Laboratories
Lysyl Endopeptidase(LysC)	Wako Pure Chemicals	129-02541
NanoLC oven	MPI design, MS Wil GmbH
N-Lauroylsarcosine sodium salt	Sigma-Aldrich	L-5125
Orbitrap Fusion Lumos mass spectrometer	ThermoFisher
Pierce BCA Protein Assay Kit	ThermoFisher / Pierce	23225
PLRP-S (300 Å, 50 µm) polymeric reversed phase particles	Agilent Technologies	PL1412-2K01
PTMScan Ubiquitin Remnant Motif (K-ε-GG) Kit	Cell Signaling Technologies	5562
Sep-Pak tC18 6 cc Vac Cartridge	Waters	WAT036790	Remove the tC18 material from the cartridge before filling the cartridge with PLRP-S
Sodium deoxycholate	Sigma-Aldrich	30970
Tris-base	Sigma-Aldrich	T6066
Tris-HCl	Sigma-Aldrich	T5941
Trypsin, TPCK Treated	ThermoFisher	20233