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Molecular & Cellular Proteomics 7:2323-2336, 2008.
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| ABSTRACT |
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The topological organization of a ZGM protein relative to the lipid bilayer dictates its accessibility to interacting partners and modifying enzymes. Therefore, an accurate topology model describing the number of transmembrane spans and the orientation of a ZGM protein is essential for understanding its correct function. This importance is highlighted in the case of syncollin that was originally suggested as a Ca2+-sensitive regulator of the SNARE complex but then identified as a luminal peripheral membrane protein likely playing a role in ZG maturation (4). Despite the importance of membrane topology, there is currently no experimental method able to derive full-topology models in a global manner. The development of a topology model still largely relies on sequence-based computational algorithms to predict transmembrane domains. However, such predictions are not always consistent among different algorithms and usually do not clarify the orientation of a protein. Therefore, experimentally determined reference points are needed to constrain the topology prediction. Traditionally a protease protection assay or glycosylation mapping is used to obtain topology information on an individual protein basis. Very recently, large scale topology mappings have been applied to Escherichia coli and yeast to determine the locations of the membrane protein carboxyl termini using fusion proteins with topology reporters (5, 6). In mammalian cells, a fluorescence-based protease protection technique was introduced to characterize the topology of a small set of green fluorescent protein fusion proteins in live cells (7). Both of the above strategies required exogenous expression of fusion proteins, which can be labor-intensive and may sometimes introduce artifacts.
Because of its ability to analyze endogenous proteins, a mass spectrometry-based proteomics approach provides a promising alternative to the above strategies. In a pioneering study, Wu et al. (8) reported the topology analysis of a number of Golgi membrane proteins and demonstrated the application of shotgun proteomics to high throughput topology analysis. However, the method did not provide a means for relative quantification between samples (9); therefore the potential of quantitative proteomics for global topology mapping of organellar membrane proteins has not been fully exploited. The value of a quantitative approach to topology is that it allows development of a more powerful statistical model to discriminate between states. In the current study, as a second step toward a comprehensive architectural model of the ZGM, we combined a global protease protection analysis with iTRAQ-based quantification and developed a statistical model to assign topologies to membrane protein domains. By applying this method to systematic topology analysis of endogenous ZGM proteins, we significantly extended the proteins identified on ZGM and more importantly provided experimentally constrained topology information for all identified proteins. This comprehensive topological map of ZGM proteins bridges between cataloging individual ZGM proteins and building protein-protein interaction networks of ZGM. It will aid development of interaction models and provides a firm foundation for future functional studies of individual ZGM proteins.
| EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES |
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-Cyano-4-hydroxycinamic acid and other reagents were obtained from Sigma. Anti-Rab27B, anti-Rab3D, and anti-secretory carrier membrane protein (SCAMP) 1 antibodies were gifts from Drs. T. Izumi, M. McNiven, and D. Castle, respectively. Anti-synaptotagmin-like protein 1 (Slp1), anti-myosin Vc, and anti-polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (pIgR) antibodies were gifts from Drs. S. Catz, R. Cheney, and C. Okamoto, respectively. Anti-syntaxin 7 antibody was from Synaptic Systems (Goettingen, Germany), and anti-amylase antibody was from Sigma. Anti-ectonucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolase 1 (ENTP1) and anti-Rap1 antibodies were from Santa Cruz Biotechnology (Santa Cruz, CA). Strong cation exchange (SCX) MicroSpinTM columns were from The Nest Group, Inc. (Southborough, MA). The Zorbax C18 reversed-phase cartridge and Zorbax 300 SB C18 reversed-phase analytical column were purchased from Agilent (Palo Alto, CA). HPLC grade water and acetonitrile (Optima) were purchased from Fisher. All chemicals were of analytical grade and used as received.
Isolation of Zymogen Granules and Purification of Zymogen Granule Membranes—
ZGs and ZGM were purified as described in our early proteomics study (3), and more details are available in a more recent publication (10). After the procedure, purified ZGMs were pelleted and stored at –80 °C until use.
Proteinase K Digestion of Intact Zymogen Granules—
For protease protection studies, ZGs purified in the Percoll gradient were collected and directly diluted in homogenization buffer without any additional centrifugation step to minimize mechanical shearing. No protease inhibitors were included in Percoll gradient and the dilution buffer to avoid interference with subsequent protease digestion. Proteinase K was chosen in the study because of its nonspecificity and high activity at low temperature and neutral pH. The ZG suspension was divided evenly in four groups. Proteinase K (
150 µg each) was added to two groups of ZGs at an estimated enzyme to substrate ratio of 1:50 (mass to mass). An equal amount of buffer was added to the other two groups of ZGs as controls. The ZGs were incubated at 4 °C for 15 or 30 min. After digestion, ZG suspensions were diluted with homogenization buffer containing 1 mM fresh PMSF to terminate digestion. ZGs were collected by centrifuging at 1700 x g for 10 min at 4 °C. The supernatants were removed, and ZGs were resuspended in ZG lysis buffer. ZG membranes were purified as described above under "Isolation of Zymogen Granules and Purification of Zymogen Granule Membranes," and the ZG content from each group was saved.
In-solution Digestion and iTRAQ Labeling—
For in-solution digestion, ZGM pellets were solubilized on ice in 50 µl of buffer containing 500 mM tetraethylammonium bicarbonate, 8 M urea, and 0.4% SDS. Protein concentrations were determined with the Bio-Rad Bradford assay kit. ZGM proteins (30 µg) from each group were reduced with 5 mM tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine for 1 h at 37 °C, and then cysteines were blocked with 10 mM methyl methanethiosulfonate for 20 min at room temperature. The protein solution was diluted four times with 0.5 M tetraethylammonium bicarbonate containing 3 µg of trypsin (Promega sequencing grade, 1:10, w/w) and incubated at 37 °C overnight. To quantitatively distinguish protease-sensitive and -protected peptides, multiplexed isobaric tags (iTRAQ reagents) were used to label tryptic peptides from control and proteinase K-treated ZGM samples, respectively (114 and 115 iTRAQ reporters for controls and 116 and 117 iTRAQ reporters for proteinase K-treated ZGMs). The labeling procedure used was according to the protocol provided by the manufacturer. The reaction was stopped by diluting the mixture with 10 volumes of SCX buffer containing 10 mM KH2PO4 and 15% acetonitrile with pH adjusted to 3.
2D LC-MALDI-MS/MS—
As described in our early proteomics study (3), the combined iTRAQ-labeled peptide mixture was first fractionated on a SCX MicroSpin column. The eluate from each salt step was first desalted and concentrated on a reversed-phase cartridge (Zorbax C18; 5 mm x 0.3-mm inner diameter; 5-µm particles; Agilent) and then separated by a reversed-phase column (Zorbax 300 SB C18 column, 75 µm x 150 mm, 3.5-µm particles) on an Agilent 1100 HPLC system. The column effluent was mixed with MALDI matrix (2 mg/ml
-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid) and spotted on 1536-well OptiTOFTM MALDI target plates that were later analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry.
The MS and MS/MS spectra were acquired on an Applied Biosystems 4800 Proteomics Analyzer (TOF/TOF) (Applied Biosystems/MDX Sciex, Foster City, CA) in positive ion reflection mode with a 200-Hz neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet (Nd:YAG) laser operating at 355 nm. Accelerating voltage was 20 kV with a 400-ns delay. For MS/MS spectra, the collision energy was 2 keV, and the collision gas was air. Each MALDI plate was calibrated on nine calibration wells using standards from Applied Biosystems with a 20-ppm mass accuracy in the MS mode. Both MS and MS/MS data were then acquired in the sample wells using the instrument default calibration. Typical MS spectra were obtained with the minimum possible laser energy to maintain the best resolution. Single stage MS spectra for the entire samples were collected first, and in each sample well MS/MS spectra were acquired from the 12 most intense peaks above the signal to noise ratio threshold of 30.
Database Search and Statistic Analysis of iTRAQ Results—
Database searching was performed using Applied Biosystems GPS ExplorerTM v3.6. This software interacts directly with the Oracle database in which the mass spectrometer stores its data and submits monoisotopic peak lists in batch to a local version of the Mascot search engine (v2.1) for protein identities (11). No additional peak list filtering was specified. Peak lists were generated by the mass spectrometer during data acquisition based on a specified signal to noise threshold (30 in this case). To estimate the false positive rate (FPR) of peptide identifications in each data set, a target-decoy database was generated by manually concatenating the forward and reverse sequences in the International Protein Index (IPI) rat database (version 3.18 with 38,873 of Rattus norvegicus proteins and 77,746 total sequences). The decoy database method is being increasingly used as an independent estimate of FPR in database searching (12, 13). At any given probability threshold, the number of matches to reversed sequences can be counted and compared with the total number of peptide assignments above that threshold to derive an estimate of the FPR.
The database searches were performed with the following parameters: up to one missed cleavage, amino-terminal and lysine modification by iTRAQ reagent and methyl methanethiosulfonate modification on cysteine as fixed modifications, and methionine oxidation as a variable modification. For all the searches, precursor ion mass tolerance was set as 150 ppm, and fragment ion mass tolerance was defined as 0.6 Da. A stringent threshold of 1% FPR (13, 14), which corresponds to a Mascot ion score
29 and GPS Explorer ion score confidence interval greater than 90%, was used to include peptides for protein identification and peptide quantification. All the unique peptides were manually examined to generate a minimal list of protein identifications according to the strategy proposed by Nesvizhskii et al. (15, 16). To conclude the identification of a specific isoform in a protein family (e.g. Rabs), at least one unique peptide has to be detected that is not shared by other isoforms in the same protein family. In a few incidences where different isoforms (e.g. Rap1A and -1B) could not be distinguished based on the detected peptides, the common protein name (e.g. Rap1) was reported without specifying its isoform. Spectra with de novo sequence annotations were interpreted and documented using a locally developed software program, MSExpedite available through ProteomeCommons.
For quantification, the peptide identifications and their iTRAQ ratios were exported to Excel from the GPS ExplorerTM MS/MS summary tables. The software exports ratios based on peak areas for each iTRAQ label. The table was sorted by ion scores in a descending order, and only peptides within 1% FPR, again corresponding to Mascot ions score
29, were selected for further analysis. The identified peptides were grouped according to their protein names and accession numbers. The peptides identified as the same sequence from multiple sample wells were counted as one unique peptide, and an average iTRAQ ratio and its corresponding S.D. was obtained for each unique peptide. For double duplex experiments, a ratio between the average of two proteinase K-treated samples and that of two control samples, referred to as "PK/CT," was used for each unique peptide. Abundance ratio calculations included corrections for overlapping isotopic contributions (both natural and enriched 13C components).
Statistical Modeling of the iTRAQ Ratio Distributions in the Topology Studies—
A statistical model was developed to estimate the probability that any observed peptide is derived from either the luminal or the cytoplasmic fraction based on the observed iTRAQ ratio. A two-component mixture model is used (17, 18) that functions by fitting two separate curves to the observed bimodal distribution of all peptide iTRAQ ratios in each data set (Fig. 4). For these data, a normal curve is used to model the lower ratio cytosolic fraction, and a
distribution is used for the luminal fraction. The distributions are fitted to the data in a semisupervised manner: fundamentally an expectation-maximization algorithm is used to learn an optimal fit for the distributions to the data set in an automated way starting from training distributions of peptides known to be cytosolic and luminal, but the fit is assisted by setting guiding parameters for intensity and shape based on both the training data and manual curation. The expectation-maximization algorithm is an iterative, two-step optimization approach in which the parameters of each distribution are used to calculate, at each iteration, the probability of each peptide belonging to both the cytosolic and luminal fractions. These probabilities are then used to adjust the distribution shapes by weighting the contribution of each peptide ratio to each of the two distributions in a manner proportional to its probability of being in that distribution. The algorithm proceeds in this manner, by successively recalculating probabilities after each adjustment of the curve and then adjusting the curve based on these weighted probabilities, until a convergence is achieved. The probabilities of each peptide are then reported as a Bayesian probability. For the cytosolic fraction the probability of the peptide being cytosolic given a peptide ratio r is calculated as follows.
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The numerator of this formula may be interpreted as the probability of having the iTRAQ ratio of r and being cytosolic, and the denominator may be interpreted as the overall probability of having the iTRAQ ratio r. The p(r|cyt) and p(r|lum) are the values calculated for the cytosolic and luminal distributions, respectively, at a given value of r; finally the p(cyt) and p(lum) terms are the "prior" proportion of cytosolic to luminal peptides in the data set. The luminal probability at any value of r is calculated in an analogous manner. For these data, the probabilities of peptides known with high confidence to be either cytosolic or luminal were fixed to "1" for the corresponding fraction (and "0" for the other) and modeled in combination with the unknown peptides. This had the effect of guiding the model learning, a method utilized in Marelli et al. (17) as well.
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| RESULTS |
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Proteinase K Treatment Generated Two Populations of Tryptic Peptides with Distinct iTRAQ Ratio (Proteinase K-treated Versus Control) Distributions—
In a typical global protease protection experiment, over 3200 MS/MS spectra were acquired leading to 1079 peptide identifications with a 1% or less estimated FPR by target-decoy database search. To evaluate the overall quality of the data, histograms of the iTRAQ ratio distributions of these peptides were analyzed. As shown in Fig. 2 (upper left), the iTRAQ ratios between two control groups appeared to have a normal distribution centered around 1.0 (mean ± S.D. = 1.02 ± 0.19). Similarly the iTRAQ ratios between two proteinase K-treated (15- and 30-min) groups were also distributed around 1.0. with a larger standard deviation (mean ± S.D. = 1.04 ± 0.44) compared with the control distribution because of different digestion durations (Fig. 2, upper right). By contrast, the iTRAQ ratio distributions between proteinase K-treated groups and control groups dramatically differed from a normal distribution and appeared as a bimodal distribution indicating the presence of two populations of peptides, protease-sensitive and -protected, upon proteinase K treatment (Fig. 2, bottom left and right). Upon 15-min proteinase K digestion, a relatively small population of peptides appeared to have significantly reduced iTRAQ ratios (distributed between 0 and 0.55), whereas the majority of the peptides remained largely unchanged (Fig. 2, bottom left). To further differentiate these two populations of peptides, a longer period of digestion, 30 min, was examined. Indeed more peptides had further reduced iTRAQ ratios; however, the boundary distinguishing the two populations of peptides also became less clear (Fig. 2, bottom right). Based on this observation, we hypothesized that the population with the low iTRAQ ratios contained peptides from the cytoplasm-orientated proteins and protein domains, whereas the second population with unchanged ratios included peptides from the luminal proteins and protein domains.
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Statistical Modeling to Classify Peptides as Cytoplasmic or Luminal with a Calculated Probability Based on Their Observed iTRAQ Ratios—
The results from ZG proteins of known topology highlighted the potential of the quantitative protease protection analysis to distinguish cytoplasmic and luminal peptides and therefore derive topologies of the corresponding proteins. For these data, the bimodal distribution observed suggests that a simple thresholding heuristic could have been utilized to classify the majority of peptides as either cytoplasmic or luminal (e.g. a ratio
0.5 is cytoplasmic). However, we sought to develop a more precise measure because of the presence of a number of borderline peptides as well as the fact that the most discriminative threshold tended to vary somewhat between data sets.
To accurately classify peptides as cytoplasmic or luminal based on their measured iTRAQ ratios, a simple statistical model was developed. Based on the assumption that peptides must be derived from one of these two categories, the model fits two distributions to the data set representing each of the cytoplasmic or luminal fractions in an iterative manner (see "Experimental Procedures" for details). Fig. 4 displays the final fit of the distributions to two data sets described above under "Proteinase K Treatment Generated Two Populations of Tryptic Peptides with Distinct iTRAQ Ratio (Proteinase K-treated Versus Control) Distributions." The green plots indicate a histogram of the number of peptides identified at each indicated iTRAQ ratio with ratios binned at 0.05-unit intervals. The red and blue plots in the figure represent the learned fits of the model for the cytoplasmic and luminal fractions, respectively. Probability scores of a given peptide being derived from either fraction are then calculated based on the relative contributions of each of the distributions for any measured iTRAQ ratio. Initial starting parameters for the distributions are derived from a training set of peptides of known topology (supplemental Table 2); curves representing the starting distributions are plotted for each fraction in the figure as dashed lines. The y axis for the starting distributions is scaled by a factor of 10 in the figure to more easily visualize their shape. For each data set, probabilities for peptides of known topology are fixed at 1.0 for their respective category. These peptides assist the model in learning optimal distributions for each data set. The use of the
distribution for the luminal fraction was deliberately chosen to provide a steep descent in the left-hand portion of the curve to provide a sharper differentiation between the cytosolic and luminal fractions.
In Fig. 4, right (experiment 2), the iTRAQ ratios of the luminal fraction averaged around 0.9 (peak at around 0.8) instead of 1.0 as in experiment 1. Correspondingly the average of the cytoplasmic fraction was also lower. We think this shift reflected the slightly unevenness of sample amounts mixed together between control and proteinase K-treated groups. We could have normalized the second experiment by increasing all the iTRAQ ratios by a factor of
1.1 to shift the average iTRAQ ratio of the luminal peptides to 1.0. However, we decided not to do this for the following reasons. First, the drift, less than 15%, was fairly small. Second, more importantly, we want to show that the separation of peptides into two clusters based on their iTRAQ ratios does not rely on such normalization.
Global Topology Analysis of ZGM Proteins—
Using the statistical model, we obtained probabilities of being cytoplasmic or luminal for all 654 unique tryptic peptides detected in two independent studies (483 from experiment 1 and 484 from experiment 2) (supplemental Table 3). 95% (experiment 1) and 90% (experiment 2) of peptides had a calculated probability of 0.95 or greater to be either cytoplasmic or luminal. The percentage increased to 98% in experiment 1 and 95% in experiment 2 for peptides with a calculated probability of greater than 0.80. All peptides were separated into two categories, cytoplasmic (color-coded as red) if cytoplasmic probability was >0.50 or luminal (blue) if cytoplasmic probability was <0.50 (supplemental Tables 1, 2, and 3). The iTRAQ ratios (PK/CT) corresponding to a cytoplasmic probability at 0.50 are 0.57 in experiment 1 and 0.48 in experiment 2. 313 peptides were common in both experiments among which 308 peptides (
98%) had consistent topology assignments and only five peptides (
2%) had inconsistent topology assignments in two experiments. These peptides led to the identification of 285 non-redundant proteins together with their topology information derived from the corresponding iTRAQ ratios. The protein names, accession numbers, peptide sequences, their iTRAQ ratios in two independent studies, and corresponding cytoplasmic probabilities are summarized in supplemental Table 3. After a database and literature search, 73 highly likely contaminating mitochondrial and ribosomal proteins, indicated in supplemental Table 3, were excluded from further analysis. The membrane topology was analyzed for the remaining proteins by combining our experimental results with transmembrane helix prediction using computational software including TMHMM, TMpred, and SOSUI. The detailed topology analyses of a subset of 66 known and highly likely ZGM proteins are summarized in Table I. The remaining 146 proteins include a large number of proteins with uncharacterized functions or subcellular localization as well as proteins reported previously in another compartment or compartments along the secretory pathway but still possible to be genuine ZGM proteins. To validate the iTRAQ-based topology analysis approach, we compared our experimentally constrained models with published results when available. These results included both direct evidence from ZGMs and indirect evidence from other cellular membranes with the assumption that the membrane topology is conserved along the secretory pathway and in different cell types. In addition, the ZGM localization and iTRAQ-based topology assignment of several newly identified proteins were confirmed by Western blot analysis, including ENTP1, myosin Vc, pIgR, Rab27B, Rap1, Slp1, syntaxin 7 (Fig. 5), and SCAMP 1 (Fig. 6). Among the 87 proteins examined, 81 proteins are consistent with published topology models, five are inconsistent, and one shows mixed results. Essentially all the cytoplasmic topology assignments based on low iTRAQ ratios are correct. Although the majority (
90%) of the luminal assignments are also correct, five exceptions have been found with reported cytoplasm-orientated proteins or domains having unchanged iTRAQ ratios. These included two ATPase subunits, the a1 subunit of vacuolar H+-ATPase and the
1 chain of sodium/potassium-transporting ATPase (22, 23), and three small GTPase,
subunit of guanine nucleotide-binding protein Gk, Ras homolog gene family member G, and Rac1. All but one peptide detected from these proteins showed protease protection in two independent experiments (supplemental Table 3). The exact mechanism for their resistance to protease digestion will require further investigation. Because all of these proteins have been reported on plasma membrane, one possibility is that they originated from the contaminating plasma membrane that was co-purified with ZGs as closed vesicles. In the case of synaptotagmin-like protein 1, as a member of the Rab27 effector family (24) with no predicted transmembrane domain, it is expected to be located on the cytoplasmic surface of ZGM. However, only three (of eight) detected peptides near the amino terminus appeared to be protease-sensitive. Interestingly the remaining five protected peptides are located within the two C2 domains containing an eight-stranded antiparallel β structure that binds membrane lipid very tightly (25). The strong membrane interaction and the unique antiparallel β structure of this region of Slp1 might explain the unusual protease protection observed in this study.
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Because the iTRAQ-based quantification is at the peptide level, this technique can map peptides at both amino- and carboxyl-termini as demonstrated in Fig. 6C. Moreover it can also map peptides to both cytoplasmic and luminal loops of the same transmembrane proteins and therefore has the potential to validate software-based transmembrane helix predications. Such examples include 4F2 heavy chain, mucin 1, and transmembrane protein 63A (Tm63A) (Table I). As shown in Fig. 7, A and B, four unique peptides were identified from Tm63A. Two of the four peptides with higher iTRAQ ratios were mapped to a large hydrophilic loop, and the other two with very low iTRAQ ratios were mapped to the carboxyl terminus (Fig. 7, B and C). Our results indicated that the carboxyl terminus of Tm63A is facing the cytoplasm, whereas the large hydrophilic loop between positions 200 and 400 is highly likely in the lumen. This implies that there should be an odd number of complete transmembrane helixes in between the carboxyl terminus and the loop. Interestingly although very consistent in predicting the first three transmembrane helixes between amino acids 1 and 200, five widely used topology prediction softwares diverged on the predicted numbers of transmembrane helixes from amino acid 400 on. Although SOSUI, TopPred, and TMpred all predicted seven helixes, TMHMM predicted eight, and HMMTOP predicted six transmembrane helixes. Our results supported the presence of seven transmembrane helixes, and a topology model was proposed accordingly as shown in Fig. 7C.
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-secretase complex. Two other subunits of the
-secretase, presenilin 1 and nicastrin (28, 29), were also identified in this study (Table I and supplemental Table 3). The ZG localization of presenilin 2 was confirmed by immunostaining of isolated ZGs with specific antibody (data not shown). The topology model of presenilin 2 and the location of the detected semitryptic peptides are shown in supplemental Fig. 2B. | DISCUSSION |
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Despite the advantages discussed above, this method does have some limitations and requires caution during implementation. Based on our time course study, the experimental condition needs to be carefully tested to achieve sufficient removal of cytoplasm-orientated protein domains while preventing organelle membrane disruption and consequent digestion of luminal proteins. Using a training set of proteins with known topology has turned out to be a very valuable approach for optimizing the digestion conditions. In addition to the digestion time, the amount of proteinase K may also be adjusted to optimize digestion if necessary. In our topology analysis, essentially all the low iTRAQ ratios corresponded to cytoplasm-orientated peptides. However, the opposite conclusion is not always true, and several potentially cytoplasm-orientated protein domains were found with unchanged iTRAQ ratios. The exact mechanism for their resistance to protease digestion requires further investigation. Although luminal peptide assignment, estimated to be around 90% in our case, is less accurate compared with cytoplasmic peptide assignment, essentially 100%, it still outperforms the widely used computational algorithms that have up to around 80% overall accuracy for predicting membrane protein topology (30). In a conventional protease protection assay, non-ionic detergent such as Triton X-100 is commonly used to confirm the lipid bilayer-dependent protection. However, this approach is not directly applicable in our experiments because complete solubilization of ZGs will prevent the separation of ZGM proteins from overwhelmingly abundant ZG content proteins. It may be possible to distinguish membrane barrier-dependent protections from conformation-specific protections by using mild chaotropes or ionophore to partially solubilize ZGs. Such a procedure is currently being developed in our laboratory. Because trypsin was used in the second digestion in our method and some extramembrane loops contain no or only one trypsin cleavage site, the sequence coverage was relatively low for transmembrane proteins. In future studies, multiple analyses with different protease digestions could be combined to increase sequence coverage.
The experimentally constrained topology map of ZGM proteins presented in this study allows better understanding of the organization of these proteins across the lipid bilayer and may provide insight into their potential functions. For example, the proteins regulating vesicular trafficking are all located on the cytoplasmic surface of the ZGM. These include multiple Rab proteins and their potential effectors, Slp1 and Slp4 (24), and molecular motor proteins, myosins and dynein together with its adaptor, dynactin 1 (31). Furthermore the SNARE proteins, syntaxins and VAMPs, have one transmembrane domain and the rest of protein facing the cytoplasm to mediate ZG docking and membrane fusion. The newly identified cytoplasm-orientated ZGM proteins also include myristoylated alanine-rich protein kinase C substrate, 2',3'-cyclic-nucleotide 3'-phosphodiesterase, and phospholemman. Their roles on the ZGM are not well understood, but they likely play a role in mediating the action of known regulators of ZG secretion such as cAMP-dependent protein kinase and protein kinase C (32). Proteins on the luminal side of ZGM include digestive enzymes and abundant ZG matrix proteins such as GP2, GP3, syncollin, and ZG16. Some of these abundant lumen-orientated proteins could play a role in zymogen sorting and ZG formation (4, 33), but their exact functions are not clear. Among the multipass transmembrane proteins on the ZGM are transporters, membrane-bound enzymes, and several isoforms of SCAMPs as well as polymeric immunoglobulin receptor and pantophysin. Interestingly the amyloid protein precursor and several subunits of
-secretase including nicastrin and presenilins 1 and 2 were also found associated with the ZGM. The functions of most of these transmembrane proteins are currently not clear and will be the targets of intensive investigation in future studies. Among these proteins, several single pass transmembrane proteins with the majority of the sequences in ZG lumen are of special interest. If receptor-mediated transport is believed to be the mechanism of ZG budding from trans-Golgi network by topology homology with known cargo receptors such as mannose 6-phosphate receptors, ERGIC53, and VIP36 family proteins (34, 35), these proteins may include the candidate cargo receptor for zymogen sorting. In addition to the functional implications, the topology map of ZGM proteins also provides a foundation for subsequent analysis of a protein-protein interaction network on ZGM. For example, the topological organization restricts the Rab-interacting proteins on the cytoplasmic surface of ZGM. In fact, two cytoplasm-orientated proteins, Slp1 and myosin Vc, have been found to interact with two Rab proteins on ZGM.2
In addition to the topology analysis reported here, we carried out two additional proteomics analyses on purified ZGM, one using 1D SDS-PAGE combined with 1D LC-MALDI-MS/MS and the other using 2D LC-ESI-MS/MS on an LTQ-Orbitrap (data will be published separately). Altogether over 300 proteins were identified from purified ZGMs with high confidence. This represents a significant extension of identified ZGM proteins. It is worth noting that although increased instrument sensitivity allowed identification of many more low abundance ZGM proteins it also uncovered more contaminating proteins. The confirmation of identified proteins on ZGM will continue to be a major task in the foreseeable future. Indicative of the intense interest in understanding the ZGM proteome, a very recent study using 1D SDS-PAGE coupled with 1D LC-MS/MS identified, using less stringent criteria and a more redundant database, 371 proteins from both ZG membrane and content (36). A preliminary comparison indicated a large degree of overlap between our studies and these data. A detailed comparison is out of the scope of this study and will be published elsewhere.
In summary, we reported here a new quantitative proteomics approach to conduct global topology analysis of ZGM proteins by combining a protease protection assay with iTRAQ-based quantification. In addition, a statistical mixture model was developed to provide probabilities of assigned topology for each identified peptides based on their iTRAQ ratios. By implementing this approach, we presented, for the first time, an experimentally constrained, comprehensive topology map of ZG membrane proteins. This model provides a firm foundation for developing a higher order architecture model of ZGM and for future functional studies of each individual ZGM protein.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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Published, MCP Papers in Press, August 4, 2008, DOI 10.1074/mcp.M700575-MCP200
1 The abbreviations used are: ZG, zymogen granule; ENTP1, ectonucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolase 1; iTRAQ, isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification; pIgR, polymeric immunoglobulin receptor; SCX, strong cation exchange; SNARE, soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor; TMHMM, Transmembrane Hidden Markov Model; VAMP, vesicle-associated membrane protein; ZGM, zymogen granule membrane; TM, transmembrane; Slp, synaptotagmin-like protein; 2D, two-dimensional; FPR, false positive rate; PK/CT, ratio between the average of two proteinase K-treated samples and that of two control samples; SCAMP, secretory carrier membrane protein; Tm63A, transmembrane protein 63A; 1D, one-dimensional. ![]()
2 X. Chen and J. A. Williams, unpublished data. ![]()
* This work was supported, in whole or in part, by National Institutes of Health Grants P41 RR018627 from the National Resource for Proteomics and Pathways (to P. C. A.), R37 DK41122 (to J. A. W.), P30 DK34933 (to the Michigan Gastrointestinal Peptide Center through its core facilities), and P60 DK20572 (to the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center through its Morphology and Image Analysis Core). This work was also supported by a Pilot Project award (to X. C.). The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact. ![]()
S The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.mcponline.org) contains supplemental material. ![]()
¶ To whom correspondence should be addressed: National Resource for Proteomics and Pathways, 1195SE North Ingalls Bldg., The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Tel.: 734-647-0951; Fax: 734-647-0951; E-mail: xuequnc{at}umich.edu
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J. A. Williams, X. Chen, and M. E. Sabbatini Small G proteins as key regulators of pancreatic digestive enzyme secretion Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab, March 1, 2009; 296(3): E405 - E414. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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