Originally published In Press as doi:10.1074/mcp.M700345-MCP200 on November 19, 2007.
Molecular & Cellular Proteomics 7:442-447, 2008.
© 2008 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.
Research
Stoichiometry and Absolute Quantification of Proteins with Mass Spectrometry Using Fluorescent and Isotope-labeled Concatenated Peptide Standards*,S
Dhaval Nanavati ,
Marjan Gucek ,
Jacqueline L. S. Milne ,
Sriram Subramaniam and
Sanford P. Markey ,¶
From the Laboratory of Neurotoxicology, National Institute of Mental Health and Laboratory of Cell Biology, NCI, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892
We have explored a general approach for the determination of absolute amounts and the relative stoichiometry of proteins in a mixture using fluorescence and mass spectrometry. We engineered a gene to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) with a synthetic fusion protein (GAB-GFP) in Escherichia coli to function as a spectroscopic standard for the quantification of an analogous stable isotope-labeled, non-fluorescent fusion protein (GAB*) and for the quantification and stoichiometric analysis of purified transducin, a heterotrimeric G-protein complex. Both GAB-GFP and GAB* contain concatenated sequences of specific proteotypic peptides that are derived from the , β, and protein subunits of transducin and that are each flanked by spacer regions that maintain the native proteolytic properties for these peptide fragments. Spectroscopic quantification of GAB-GFP provided a molar scale for mass spectrometric ratios from tryptic peptides of GAB* and defined molar responses for mass spectrometric signal intensities from a purified transducin complex. The stoichiometry of transducin subunits , β, and was measured to be 1:1.1:1.15 over a 5-fold range of labeled internal standard with a relative standard deviation of 9%. Fusing a unique genetically coded spectroscopic signal element with concatenated proteotypic peptides provides a powerful method to accurately quantify and determine the relative stoichiometry of multiple proteins present in complexes or mixtures that cannot be readily assessed using classical gravimetric, enzymatic, or antibody-based technologies.
¶ To whom correspondence should be addressed: National Inst. of Mental Health, 10 Center Dr., Rm. 3D42, Bethesda, MD 20892-1262. Tel.: 301-496-4022; E-mail: markeys{at}mail.nih.gov

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Copyright © 2008 by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
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