MARCKS affects cell motility and response to BTK inhibitors in CLL.

Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors are highly active drugs for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). To understand the response to BTK inhibitors on a molecular level, we performed (phospho)proteomic analyses under ibrutinib treatment. We identified 3466 proteins and 9184 phosphopeptides (representing 2854 proteins) in CLL cells exhibiting a physiological ratio of phosphorylated serines (pS), threonines (pT), and tyrosines (pY) (pS:pT:pY). Expression of 83 proteins differed between unmutated immunoglobulin heavy-chain variable region (IGHV) CLL (UM-CLL) and mutated IGHV CLL (M-CLL). Strikingly, UM-CLL cells showed higher basal phosphorylation levels than M-CLL samples. Effects of ibrutinib on protein phosphorylation levels were stronger in UM-CLL, especially on phosphorylated tyrosines. The differentially regulated phosphopeptides and proteins clustered in pathways regulating cell migration, motility, cytoskeleton composition, and survival. One protein, myristoylated alanine-rich C-kinase substrate (MARCKS), showed striking differences in expression and phosphorylation level in UM-CLL vs M-CLL. MARCKS sequesters phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate, thereby affecting central signaling pathways and clustering of the B-cell receptor (BCR). Genetically induced loss of MARCKS significantly increased AKT signaling and migratory capacity. CD40L stimulation increased expression of MARCKS. BCR stimulation induced phosphorylation of MARCKS, which was reduced by BTK inhibitors. In line with our in vitro findings, low MARCKS expression is associated with significantly higher treatment-induced leukocytosis and more pronounced decrease of nodal disease in patients with CLL treated with acalabrutinib.

Unraveling the Phosphocholination Mechanism of the Legionella pneumophila Enzyme AnkX.

The intracellular pathogen Legionella pneumophila infects lung macrophages and injects numerous effector proteins into the host cell to establish a vacuole for proliferation. The necessary interference with vesicular trafficking of the host is achieved by modulation of the function of Rab GTPases. The effector protein AnkX chemically modifies Rab1b and Rab35 by covalent phosphocholination of serine or threonine residues using CDP-choline as a donor. So far, the phosphoryl transfer mechanism and the relevance of observed autophosphocholination of AnkX remained disputable. We designed tailored caged compounds to make this type of enzymatic reaction accessible for time-resolved Fourier transform infrared difference spectroscopy. By combining spectroscopic and biochemical methods, we determined that full length AnkX is autophosphocholinated at Ser521, Thr620, and Thr943. However, autophosphocholination loses specificity for these sites in shortened constructs and does not appear to be relevant for the catalysis of the phosphoryl transfer. In contrast, transient phosphocholination of His229 in the conserved catalytic motif might exist as a short-lived reaction intermediate. Upon substrate binding, His229 is deprotonated and locked in this state, being rendered capable of a nucleophilic attack on the pyrophosphate moiety of the substrate. The proton that originated from His229 is transferred to a nearby carboxylic acid residue. Thus, our combined findings support a ping-pong mechanism involving phosphocholination of His229 and subsequent transfer of phosphocholine to the Rab GTPase. Our approach can be extended to the investigation of further nucleotidyl transfer reactions, which are currently of reemerging interest in regulatory pathways of host-pathogen interactions.

Variable Digestion Strategies for Phosphoproteomics Analysis.

In recent years, mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics has propelled our knowledge about the regulation of cellular pathways. Nevertheless, typically applied bottom-up strategies have several limitations. Trypsin, the preferentially used proteolytic enzyme shows impaired cleavage efficiency in the vicinity of phosphorylation sites. Moreover, depending on the frequency and distribution of tryptic cleavage sites (Arg/Lys), generated peptides can be either too short or too long for confident identification using standard LC-MS approaches. To overcome these limitations, we introduce an alternative and simple approach based on the usage of the nonspecific serine protease subtilisin, which enables a fast and reproducible digestion and provides access to "hidden" areas of the proteome. Thus, in a single LC-MS experiment >1800 phosphopeptides were confidently identified and localized from 125 µg of HeLa digest, compared to >2100 sites after tryptic digestion. While the overlap was less than 20 %, subtilisin allowed the identification of many phosphorylation sites that are theoretically not accessible via tryptic digestion, thus considerably increasing the coverage of the phosphoproteome.

MALDI imaging mass spectrometry to investigate endogenous peptides in an animal model of Usher's disease.

Imaging MS (MSI) has emerged as a valuable tool to study the spatial distribution of biomolecules in the brain. Herein, MALDI-MSI was used to determine the distribution of endogenous peptides in a rat model of Usher's disease. This rare disease is considered as a leading cause of deaf-blindness in humans worldwide. Cryosections of brain tissue were analyzed by MALDI-MSI to differentiate between healthy and diseased rats. MSI results were highly reproducible. Tissue-specific peptides were identified by MS/MS using LC-Orbitrap and MALDI-TOF/TOF analyses. These peptides were proposed for histological classification due to their particular spatial distribution in the brain, for example, substantia nigra, corpus callosum, and hippocampus. Several endogenous peptides showed significantly increased ion densities, particularly in the colliculi superiores and in the substantia nigra of diseased rats, including peptides derived from Fsd1, dystrobrevin-ß, and ProSAAS. Furthermore, several proteolytic degradation products of the myelin basic protein were identified, of which one peptide is most likely mediated by calpain-2. Our findings contribute to the characterization of this animal model and include possible peptide markers of disease.

Fast, efficient, and quality-controlled phosphopeptide enrichment from minute sample amounts using titanium dioxide.

Bottom-up mass spectrometry (MS) is still the method of choice for analyzing protein phosphorylation. However, the low stoichiometry of phosphorylation, especially in highly complex samples, renders the specific enrichment of phosphopeptides prior to analysis inevitable. In recent years, specific phosphopeptide enrichment strategies combined with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-MS (LC-MS) provided researchers deeper insights into the phosphorylation networks of biological systems.Here, we describe two protocols for the enrichment of phosphopeptides from biological samples using titanium dioxide (TiO2) resins, enabling the handling of small sample amounts (<20 µg of protein) as well as larger sample amounts (up to the milligram range), depending on the scientific issue to be solved.Furthermore, we imply quality control steps during sample preparation to ensure the reproducibility and reliability of the phosphoproteomic findings.

Impact of digestion conditions on phosphoproteomics.

In the past few years, the focus of phosphoproteomics has shifted from merely qualitative to quantitative and targeted studies. Tryptic digestion is a critical step that directly affects quantification and that can be impaired by phosphorylation. Therefore, we systematically characterized the digestion efficiency of 19 nonmodified and phosphorylated model peptides. Whereas we quantified a strong reduction of tryptic cleavage within phosphorylated PKA motifs (R)-R-X-pS/pT and also R-X-X-pT sequences, (R)-R-X-pY sequences were almost unaffected. Structural prediction implied the formation of salt bridges between R/K cleavage sites and phosphoamino acids pS/pT as the main reason for impaired tryptic digestion. We evaluated different conditions to optimize the digestion of such "resistant" phosphopeptides, yielding a substantial improvement of digestion efficiency. We performed a quantitative large-scale phosphoproteomic analysis of human platelets to validate our findings in a complex biological sample. Here, increasing trypsin concentrations up to a trypsin to peptide ratio of 1:10 led to a significant gain (i) in the overall number of phosphorylation sites (up to 9%) and (ii) in the intensities of individual phosphopeptides, thereby improving the sensitivity of phosphopeptide quantification. Still, for certain sequences, the negative impact of phosphorylation on digestion efficiency will further complicate the analysis of phosphorylation stoichiometry.

Phosphoproteomics--more than meets the eye.

PTMs enable cells to adapt to internal and external stimuli in the milliseconds to seconds time regime. Protein phosphorylation is probably the most important of these modifications as it affects protein structure and interactions, critically influencing the life cycle of a cell. In the last 15 years, new insights into phosphorylation have been provided by highly sensitive MS-based approaches combined with specific phosphopeptide enrichment strategies. Although so far research has mainly focused on the discovery and characterization of O-phosphorylation, this review also briefly outlines the current knowledge about N-phosphorylation depicting its ubiquitous relevance. Further, common pitfalls in sample preparation, LC-MS analysis, and subsequent data analysis are discussed as well as issues regarding quality and comparability of studies on protein phosphorylation.