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Molecular & Cellular Proteomics 3:1154-1169, 2004.
© 2004 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.














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From
Applied Biosystems, Framingham, MA 01701;
Cancer Research UK, London WC2A 3PX, United Kingdom; ¶ Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of Massachusetts, Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655; and | Section of Proteomics, Imperial College, Hammersmith Campus, London W12 ONN, United Kingdom
| ABSTRACT |
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and xrn1
mutant strains that are defective in the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay and the general 5' to 3' decay pathways, respectively. We also demonstrate the use of 4-fold multiplexing to enable relative protein measurements simultaneously with determination of absolute levels of a target protein using synthetic isobaric peptide standards. We find that inactivation of Upf1p and Xrn1p causes common as well as unique effects on protein expression.
We have developed a multiplexed set of reagents for quantitative protein analysis that place isobaric mass labels at the N termini and lysine side chains of peptides in a digest mixture. The reagents are differentially isotopically labeled such that all derivatized peptides are isobaric and chromatographically indistinguishable, but yield signature or reporter ions following CID that can be used to identify and quantify individual members of the multiplex set. Absolute quantitation of targeted proteins can also be achieved using synthetic peptides tagged with one of the members of the multiplex reagent set.
In this study, we make use of a 4-fold (4-plex) multiplex strategy to simultaneously determine relative protein levels in three yeast strains and provide a demonstration of the ability to measure the absolute quantity of specific target proteins through the use of internal peptide standards. Of particular interest is validation of quantitation via a peptide-based workflow whereby protein extraction, digestion, and labeling are performed in parallel, prior to mixing labeled samples for chromatography and MS. A well-characterized system such as yeast provides the opportunity to validate some novel aspects of this quantitative methodology. In this study, we have examined the global protein expression of a wild-type yeast strain and the isogenic upf1
and xrn1
mutant strains that are defective in the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay and the general 5' to 3' decay pathway, respectively (9, 10). A variety of global changes are observed, including consistent up-regulation of a common set of proteins involved in amino acid biosynthetic pathways in both upf1
and xrn1
strains, and specific down-regulation of proteins of the translation apparatus in the xrn1
strain.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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-casein, alcohol dehydrogenase, lysozyme, ß-galactosidase, and serotransferrin (all from Sigma, Milwaukee, WI) was reduced (2 mM Tris-(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine (TCEP), 37 °C, 1 h), alkylated (5 mM iodoacetamide, 37 °C, 2 h) and digested with trypsin (1:20 w/w, 50 mM triethylammonium bicarbonate (TEAB), 37 °C, 18 h). Four equal aliquots were treated each with one of the four isotopically enriched methylpiperazine acetic acid N-hydroxy succinimide (NHS) ester reagents by adding 0.5 mg of reagent in ethanol to 50 µl of peptide solution (70% v/v final ethanol) and allowed to react for 30 min at room temperature. The four reactions were combined in various proportions, evaporated to dryness, and quantities representing 500 fmol of each component analyzed by LC-MS/MS as described below.
Yeast Protein Extraction and Labeling
Log phase cells (75% log; 2.1 x 107 cells/ml) were harvested, frozen, and mechanically lysed by grinding over dry ice. Crude cell lysate was prepared by suspending frozen cellular material (100 mg wet weight) in 1 ml of lysis buffer (0.1 M TEAB, 0.1% v/v Triton X-100, 6 M guanidine), vortexing (1 min), sonicating (5 x 30 s), and pelleting insoluble debris by centrifugation at 13,000 x g for 5 min. Final measured protein concentrations were 33.4 mg/ml. Protein was reduced (2 mM TCEP, 37 °C, 1 h), alkylated (5 mM iodoacetamide, 37 °C, 2 h), and precipitated by the addition of 6 volumes of cold acetone (dry ice 20 min). Protein was collected by centrifugation (13,000 x g, 5 min), dried in air, and frozen at 80 °C. For digestion, protein was resuspended in digestion buffer (100 mM TEAB, 0.05% w/v SDS) to a final concentration of 1 mg/ml (total protein measured by bicinchonic acid assay (Sigma, St. Louis, MO)). Equal aliquots (500 µg) from each lysate were then digested with trypsin overnight at 37 °C (Sigma; 1:40 w/w added at 0 and 2 h) and lyophilized.
Labeling with Multiplex Reagents
Synthesis of the four derivatization reagents is discussed elsewhere (11). For each yeast strain, 150 µg of total protein was resuspended in 100 µl of labeling buffer (0.25 M TEAB, 75% ethanol), after which 1 mg of each isotopically enriched methylpiperazine acetic acid NHS ester was added (1% w/v final) and allowed to react at room temperature for 30 min. Residual reagent was quenched by adding 300 µl of water and allowing excess reagent to completely hydrolyze over an additional 30 min, then the three labeled samples were mixed and lyophilized.
Cation Exchange Chromatography
The combined peptide mixture was separated by strong cation exchange (SCX) chromatography on an Agilent 1100 HPLC system using a PolySulfoethyl A column (4.6 x 100 mm, 5 µm, 300 Å). Sample was dissolved in 4 ml of SCX loading buffer (25% v/v ACN, 10 mM KH2PO4, pH 3, with phosphoric acid) and loaded and washed isocratically for 20 min at 0.5 ml/min to remove excess reagent. Peptides were eluted with a linear gradient of 0500 mM KCl (25% v/v ACN, 10 mM KH2PO4, pH 3) over 15 min at a flow rate of 1 ml/min, with fractions collected at 1-min intervals.
LC-MS Analysis
Peptide separation was performed on an Ultimate chromatography system (Dionex-LC Packings, Hercules, CA) equipped with a Probot MALDI spotting device. Individual SCX fractions containing
10 µg of protein material were injected and captured onto a 0.3 x 5-mm trap column (3-µm C18 (Dionex-LC Packings, Hercules, CA)) and then eluted onto a 0.1 x 150-mm analytical column (3-µm C18 (Dionex-LC Packings)) using an automated binary gradient (800 nl/min) from 95% buffer A (2% ACN, 0.1% TFA) to 45% buffer B (85% ACN, 5% isopropanol, 0.1% TFA) over 35 min, then 4590% B in 5 min. For MALDI MS/MS analysis, column effluent was mixed in a 1:2 ratio with MALDI matrix (7 mg/ml-
-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid) through a 25-nl mixing tee (Upchurch Scientific, Oak Harbor, WA) and spotted in 16 x 16 spot arrays. MALDI plates were analyzed on an ABI 4700 (Applied Biosystems, Framingham, MA) proteomics analyzer. Peptide CID was performed at a collision energy of 1 kV and a collision gas pressure of
1.5 x 106 Torr. For electrospray analysis, an Ultimate LC system interfaced to a Qstar Pulsar (Applied Biosystems-MDS Sciex) mass spectrometer was used. The LC conditions were similar to those used for LC-MALDI, with peptides separated at a flow rate of 300 nl/min over a 75-µm x 150-mm C18 column (Pepmap; Dionex) using a 2-h gradient of 535% B (A, 2% ACN/0.1% formic acid; B, 98% ACN/0.1% formic acid). Survey scans were acquired from m/z 3001,500 with up to three precursors selected for MS/MS from m/z 902,000 using dynamic exclusion. A rolling collision energy was used to promote fragmentation, typical average values for doubly charged ions were 41 and 56 V for m/z 600 and 900, respectively, and for triply charged ions typical average values were 29 and 43 V for m/z 600 and 900, respectively. The collision energy range was
20% higher than that used for unlabeled peptides to overcome the stabilizing effect of the basic N-terminal derivative and achieve equivalent fragmentation.
Data Analysis and Interpretation
Peptide and protein identifications were performed using the Mascot search engine (ver. 1.9; Matrix Science, London, United Kingdom) (12). Database searching was restricted to tryptic peptides of yeast (Swiss-Prot version 42.5; 4,924 Saccharomyces cerevisiae sequences; 138,922 total sequences). S-acetamido, N-terminal, and lysine modifications were selected as fixed, methionine oxidation as variable, one missed cleavage allowed and precursor error tolerance at <50 ppm. Full trypsin specificity (N- and C-terminal was also applied. Signature-ion peak areas from the isobaric tags were extracted from the 4700 or QSTAR raw data and matched to identified peptides using prototype software tools. The complete list of identified peptides was then housed in an Access (Microsoft, Redmond, WA) database for grouping of results into proteins and calculation of ratios and standard deviation. Abundance ratio calculations included corrections for overlapping isotopic contributions (both natural and enriched 13C components).
| RESULTS AND DISCUSSION |
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Strategies have been described that employ isobaric peptide derivatives (13). To date, reaction of these reagents with complex peptide mixtures has not been shown. The use of a discreet, highly abundant, low-mass MS/MS signature ion as described in this work provides an unambiguous coding system without introducing additional sources of complexity into the mass spectrum. Finally, we use tags that generate abundant signature ions under MS/MS conditions optimal for peptide fragmentation.
The reagents described here contain N-methylpiperazine, a moderately strong base that conveys useful properties to the tagged peptides. The use of cyclic amines as N-terminal peptide derivatives to simplify the interpretation of MS/MS spectra has been described previously (14,15). We find that the tags behave similarly in both MALDI and ESI, with a tendency to form more abundant and complete b- and y-ion series, while also reducing the proportion of ion current going into less informative fragmentation pathways.
Our findings with the six-protein digest mixture show that the derivatization reaction itself is quite straightforward, requiring a simple room temperature reaction of
30 min. Residual reagent is easily quenched by the addition of one or more volumes of water prior to mixing, as decreasing the organic (ethanol) concentration accelerates hydrolysis of residual reagent. Hydrolysis is essentially complete within an additional 30 min at room temperature. Comparison of protein digest mixtures of known proportions (Fig. 3) gave accurate ratios (<6% error) and standard deviations less than 23% across two orders of magnitude. All observed peptides were confirmed as fully derivatized at N termini and lysine side chains.
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-amines to completion. We made use of database searching (Mascot) (12) with variable modifications at N termini, lysine, and tyrosine to explore the extent of possible side reactions and establish completeness of reaction. Under optimal conditions, we observed a minimal degree (<3%) of tyrosine derivatization and a similar percentage (<3%) of unlabeled N termini or lysine
-amino groups. Reaction with serine or threonine was not observed, and any possible reaction with cysteine was blocked by prior reduction and alkylation.
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Protein Identification
Proteins were identified on the basis of having at least one peptide whose individual ion score was above the 95% confidence threshold (p < 0.05) and also identified as the top-ranked matching sequence for that spectrum (12). We further restricted the number of identifications made by imposing spectrum and peptide-level nonredundancy such that any given peptide and any given MS/MS spectrum was linked to only one protein. Using these criteria, 1,217 unique proteins were identified from
4,500 peptides. More importantly, 685 of these proteins were identified by two or more of these significant peptides. Further statistical analysis for determining up- or down-regulation of protein expression levels was performed only on this latter group of 685 proteins (i.e. protein identifications made on single, unique peptides were discarded).
Protein Quantitation
The individual ratios of identified peptides from the upf1
and xrn1
strains compared with the wild-type strain were computed from signature ion peak areas using the formula: area(mutant)/(area(mutant) + area(wild type)). All protein expression values thus fall between 0 and 1, with a "no-change" 1:1 ratio = 0.5. The global all-peptide average and standard deviations were 0.503 (±0.084) and 0.485 (±0.044) for the xrn1
and upf1
strains, respectively. These values indicate a high degree of consistency between these three strains, suggesting that the parallel, peptide-based workflow did not introduce significant variability into the measurements. Peptide ratios were also grouped into proteins and averaged to arrive at protein-level ratios for those 685 proteins having two or more significant scoring peptides. The average of the protein-level standard deviations was 0.055 and 0.034 for the xrn1
and upf1
strains, respectively. In other words, there was a high degree of concordance between individual peptides contributing to the relative quantitation of any given protein.
From the global mean and standard deviation for each strain we identified proteins whose average expression ratios fell outside of ±1 standard deviation from the global mean. We further excluded proteins whose individual standard deviation (i.e. between peptides) was greater than 0.1. From this, a list of up- and down-regulated proteins was generated for the xrn1
and upf1
strains (Table I). Using these criteria, 62 and 48 proteins were considered up-regulated and 23 and 39 proteins down-regulated in upf1
and xrn1
, respectively (Table I). We compared the current set of differentially expressed proteins with relative expression data from a 2-plex pilot scale study2 of a separate batch of protein lysates from the wild-type and xrn1
strains. This comparison revealed that 86% of up-regulated and 79% of down-regulated proteins (Table I) were identified in the preliminary experiment as up- or down-regulated, respectively. We also compared the current set of differentially expressed proteins to that identified using ICAT for relative protein quantitation in the upf1
strain (16). Because of the substantial difference between workflows, there were proteins unique to each experiment; for example many proteins having two or fewer cysteines (including all major histones) were not observed in the ICAT dataset. However, comparison of the relative expression of proteins common to both experiments proved to be a useful validation of our approach. Of the 85 differentially expressed proteins we observed in the upf1
strain, 49 were also observed by ICAT, and 42 of these were concordant with respect to up- or down-regulation. The average number of peptides identified per protein also increased from
2 peptides/protein in the ICAT study to 4.5 peptides/protein in the current work.
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4,500 high-significance peptides, more than 97% were fully modified at the N terminus or lysine side chains. Incomplete and tyrosine side chain reactions thus comprised <3% of identified peptides.
The experiment also demonstrated absolute quantitation of selected proteins (Fig. 5A). In this example, 1 pmol of a synthetic tryptic peptide (ILESHDVIVPPEVR from carbamoyl phosphate synthetase) was labeled with the 117-reporter isobaric reagent and combined with the yeast strains prior to cation exchange chromatography. The peptide was identified automatically during the course of the experiment, and the intensity of the synthetic peptide-derived signature ion at m/z 117.1 was used to calculate an absolute value. We can estimate using the molecular weight (135,417) of carbamoyl phosphate synthetase that there were
26 ng of this protein in the original 150 µg of wild-type yeast lysate. This calculates to
45,000 copies per cell in the wild-type strain, rising to
98,000 copies/cell in xrn1
. This approach, where added internal peptide standards remain isobaric, is significantly different from the absolute quantitation (AQUA) approach (17), where a mass-difference approach is employed through isotopic enrichment of the synthetic peptides. Finally, we were also able to perform a more specific analysis to confirm the deletion of the Xrn1 protein in the xrn1
yeast strain (Fig. 5B), where the absence of a signature ion at m/z 114.1 established the loss of this protein.
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and xrn1
Strains
strain, 23 are seen to be also up-regulated in the upf1
strain. The magnitude of increases is, however, two to three times greater in the xrn1
strain. Similarity in protein up-regulation also extends to ontological comparison of these two mutant strains (Fig. 6). Up-regulated proteins were grouped according to biological function as described (18). Significant groups were chosen by comparison with those identified proteins that were not significantly up- or down-regulated (p < 0.05). Closer inspection reveals that many of the proteins are involved in amino acid biosynthesis (including many aspects of amine and nitrogen metabolism). Enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of each of the 20 common amino acids as well as enzymes involved in general nitrogen and amine metabolism (e.g. urea cycle and general metabolism of amine groups) are up-regulated in both xrn1
and upf1
strains. This confirms the findings of the earlier ICAT study comparing the wild-type and upf1
strains, where up-regulation of proteins involved in the urea cycle and amino acid metabolism (particularly arginine) was noted (16). Other metabolic changes seen in both upf1
and xrn1
strains include up-regulation of enzymes involved in pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis, starch and sucrose metabolism, and purine and pyrimidine metabolism.
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and upf1
deletion or mutation studies have shown that removal or inhibition of the activities of these two proteins resulted in significantly increased levels of cellular mRNA (19). One pathway of mRNA decay in yeast involves poly(A) shortening followed by decapping and then 5' to 3' decay. Cells devoid of Xrn1p therefore accumulate mRNAs that have shortened or no poly(A) tails and which may lack the 5' cap structure (20). We find that the xrn1
strain showed specific up-regulation of the ribosome biogenesis protein BMS1 required for the maturation of the 40S ribosomal subunit (21), the SC24 protein required to promote the transport of secretory, membrane, and vacuolar proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi complex (22), and the RNA polymerase II transcription elongation factor TFS2 required for efficient transcription elongation past template-encoded arresting sites. The upf1
strain showed up-regulation of proteins such as the Sec63 protein important for protein assembly in the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum (23), the Sis1 protein required for normal initiation of translation (24), the polymerase II transcription factor TFIIF that promotes transcriptional elongation (25), and the t-complex protein 1 that acts as a molecular chaperone for protein folding.
Proteins Down-regulated in the xrn1
and upf1
Strains
In contrast to the general similarity of proteins up-regulated in the xrn1
and upf1
strains, those proteins that are significantly down-regulated appear to be quite different. Of the 39 proteins down-regulated in the xrn1
strain, only three are common to the upf1
strain. Ontological classification (18) also indicates that the effects of these two mutant strains are substantially different (Table I, Fig. 6). More than half of the proteins down-regulated in xrn1
cells are structural components of the ribosome or are factors involved in protein synthesis. These include the poly(A)-binding protein Pab1p that also serves as a scaffold for a series of post-transcriptional regulatory factors involved in mRNA 3' processing, export, translation, and turnover (26), the initiating factor eIF-5A (which may have a role in regulating exonucleolytic decay (27)), and the elongation factor-1
subunit.
In contrast, many of the down-regulated proteins in the upf1
strain are involved in DNA replication or RNA transcription. Approximately one-third of the proteins down-regulated in upf1
cells are involved in chromosome and chromatin structure (histones) or transcriptional regulation. These include the Swi3 protein, which is a global activator of transcription required for the induced expression of a large number of genes (28), and Reb1 (29), a sequence-specific DNA-binding protein that recognizes sites within both the enhancer and the promoter regions of the rRNA genes as well as sites upstream of many genes transcribed by RNA polymerase II. Also down-regulated are the Trm1 and METL (S-adenosyl methionine sythetase) proteins, which are required for methylation of cellular tRNAs (30). While the basis for these observations is unclear, it is possible that the down-regulation of proteins involved in protein translation in xrn1
cells reflects a regulatory circuit responding to the loss of Xrn1ps role in pre-rRNA processing (31, 32) and that the up-regulation of proteins involved in amino acid biosynthesis in both mutant strains may occur in these strains as a consequence of restoring functional translation of several endogenous nonsense-containing mRNAs encoding enzymes in histidine, arginine, and leucine biosynthesis (33).
Relative Changes in mRNA and Protein Levels
He et al. (19) have previously used high-density oligonucleotide microarray analysis to assess global changes in mRNA abundance in the upf1
and xrn1
strains. We have utilized this data to determine whether there is a correlation between the relative changes in protein and mRNA levels in the upf1
and xrn1
strains. Fig. 7 compares average fold changes in RNA abundance (from four independent experiments) to the relative changes in protein levels determined in our analyses of the wild-type, upf1
, and xrn1
extracts. Fig. 7A shows that, for those proteins showing significant changes in levels in upf1
cells, there is no significant correlation between mRNA and protein levels (r = 0.19). Likewise, in xrn1
cells, proteins showing significant increases or decreases in levels also show no significant correlation with the levels of their respective mRNAs (Fig. 7B; r = 0.20). These comparisons indicate that the levels of a small number of proteins in the upf1
and xrn1
strains are regulated post-transcriptionally, i.e. for some proteins there are substantive differences between the respective changes in mRNA and protein levels. In agreement with previous studies (34, 35), these measurements of protein and mRNA levels are revealing quite different and nonoverlapping aspects of the overall phenotypic changes induced by the deletion of these factors.
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| CONCLUSIONS |
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In this study, we used the reagents to compare global protein expression in wild-type yeast and the isogenic upf1
and xrn1
mutant strains that are defective in the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay and the 5' to 3' decay pathway. We find that inactivation of Upf1p and Xrn1p cause both common as well as distinct effects on protein expression. Both mutant strains show increased expression of a common set of proteins involved in amino acid biosynthesis and general nitrogen metabolism. The upf1
strain showed specific down-regulation of proteins involved in DNA replication and RNA transcription, whereas the xrn1
strain exhibited specific down-regulation of components of the translation apparatus, including ribosomal proteins and translation factors. Comparison between mRNA changes and protein changes of these yeast strains showed no significant correlation.
The isobaric nature of the tags permitted the simultaneous comparison of multiple yeast strains and added synthetic peptide internal standards in a single two-dimensional-LC-MS experiment, with no increase in chromatographic or MS complexity. Importantly, ratio measurements for all the identified peptides was 100% for all strains. Measured expression ratios demonstrated high consistency, and intra-protein peptide mean and standard deviations were highly reproducible (1517%). The mixed, multiplex nature of the experiment removes any quantitative variability from chromatography that may be seen in sequential two-dimensional LC-MS analyses of individual peptide mixtures (36), and peptide coverage is significantly increased relative to ICAT. The tagging chemistry is global in that any peptide with a free amine can be labeled and measured. This should enable strategies that seek to isolate and quantify specific classes of peptides (e.g. phosphopeptides) that were essentially impossible using the ICAT cysteine-selective chemistry.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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Published, MCP Papers in Press, September 22, 2004, DOI 10.1074/mcp.M400129-MCP200
1 The abbreviations used are: PTM, post-translational modification; TCEP, Tris-(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine; TEAB, triethylammonium bicarbonate; NHS, N-hydroxy succinimide; SCX, strong cation exchange. ![]()
2 Pilot studies were conducted as a 2-plex experiment using 100 µg of total protein with similar conditions for protein extraction, digestion, labeling, chromatography, and MS. ![]()
* Part of this work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant GM27757 (to A. J.). ![]()
S The on-line version of this manuscript (available at http://www.mcponline.org) contains supplemental material. ![]()
** To whom correspondence should be addressed: Applied Biosystems, 500 Old Connecticut Path, Framingham, MA 01701. Tel.: 508-383-7484; Fax: 508-383-7813; E-mail: pappindj{at}appliedbiosystems.com
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