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Domain rearrangements in protein evolution.

Most eukaryotic proteins are multi-domain proteins that are created from fusions of genes, deletions and internal repetitions. An investigation of such evolutionary events requires a method to find the domain architecture from which each protein originates. Therefore, we defined a novel measure, domain distance, which is calculated as the number of domains that differ between two domain architectures. Using this measure the evolutionary events that distinguish a protein from its closest ancestor have been studied and it was found that indels are more common than internal repetition and that the exchange of a domain is rare. Indels and repetitions are common at both the N and C-terminals while they are rare between domains. The evolution of the majority of multi-domain proteins can be explained by the stepwise insertions of single domains, with the exception of repeats that sometimes are duplicated several domains in tandem. We show that domain distances agree with sequence similarity and semantic similarity based on gene ontology annotations. In addition, we demonstrate the use of the domain distance measure to build evolutionary trees. Finally, the evolution of multi-domain proteins is exemplified by a closer study of the evolution of two protein families, non-receptor tyrosine kinases and RhoGEFs.

Databases, Protein↗

Proteomics of curcurbit phloem exudate reveals a network of defence proteins.

Many different proteins can be separated from the sap of mature sieve tubes of different plant species. To date, only a limited number of those have been identified and functionally characterised. Due to sieve tubes inability of transcription and translation, the proteins are most probably synthesised in the intimately connected companion cells and transported into the sieve elements through plasmodesmata. The specific protein composition of phloem sap suggests an important role of these proteins not only for sieve tube maintenance, but also for whole plant physiology and development. Here we describe a comprehensive analysis of the phloem protein composition employing one- and high-resolution two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and partial sequencing by mass spectrometry. In this study more than 300 partial sequences generated by hybrid mass spectrometry were used to identify a total of 45 different proteins from the phloem exudates of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L. cv. Hoffmanns Giganta) and pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima Duch. cv. Gelber Zentner) plants. In addition to previously described phloem proteins, it was possible to localise proteins with high similarity to an acyl-CoA binding protein, a glyoxalase, a malate dehydrogenase, a rhodanese-like protein, a drought-induced protein, and a beta-glucosidase. The results indicate that the majority of the so far identified proteins are involved in stress and defence reactions.

Cucumis sativus↗

Environmental and transgene expression effects on the barley seed proteome.

The barley (Hordeum vulgare) cultivar Golden Promise is no longer widely used for malting, but is amenable to transformation and is therefore a valuable experimental cultivar. Its characteristics include high salt tolerance, however it is also susceptible to several fungal pathogens. Proteome analysis was used to describe the water-soluble protein fraction of Golden Promise seeds in comparison with the modern malting cultivar Barke. Using 2D-gel electrophoresis to visualise several hundred proteins in the pH ranges 4-7 and 6-11, 16 protein spots were found to differ between the two cultivars. Eleven of these were identified by mass spectrometric peptide mass mapping, including an abundant chitinase implicated in defence against fungal pathogens and a small heat-shock protein. To enable a comparison with transgenic seed protein patterns, differences in spot patterns between field and greenhouse-grown seeds were analysed. Four spots were observed to be increased in intensity in the proteome of greenhouse-grown seeds, three of which may be related to nitrogen availability during grain filling and total protein content of the seeds, since they also increased in field grown seeds supplied with extra nitrogen. Finally, the fate of transgene products in barley seeds was followed. Spots containing two green fluorescent protein constructs and the herbicide resistance marker phosphinothricin acetyltransferase were observed in 2D-gel patterns of transgenic seeds and identified by mass spectrometry. Phosphinothricin acetyltransferase was observed in three spots differing in pI suggesting that post-translational modification of the transgene product had occurred.

Electrophoresis, Gel, Two-Dimensional↗

Charging it up: global analysis of protein phosphorylation.

Protein phosphorylation affects most, if not all, cellular activities in eukaryotes and is essential for cell proliferation and development. An estimated 30% of cellular proteins are phosphorylated, representing the phosphoproteome, and phosphorylation can alter a protein's function, activity, localization and stability. Recent studies for large-scale identification of phosphosites using mass spectrometry are revealing the components of the phosphoproteome. The development of new tools, such as kinase assays using modified kinases or protein microarrays, enables rapid kinase substrate identification. The dynamics of specific phosphorylation events can now be monitored using mass spectrometry, single-cell analysis of flow cytometry, or fluorescent reporters. Together, these techniques are beginning to elucidate cellular processes and pathways regulated by phosphorylation, in addition to global regulatory networks.

Animals↗

Sex-based individual variation of snake venom proteome among eighteen Bothrops jararaca siblings.

Variation of venom proteome is relevant to basic research, to management of envenoming, and to studies on the evolution of poisonous snakes. In this study, we explored the venom proteomes of eighteen Bothrops jararaca specimens of a single litter born and raised in laboratory. Using electrophoretic techniques and various protocols for measuring the proteolytic activities of these venoms we have detected individual variability and highlighted sex-specific proteomic similarities and differences among sibling snakes. SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis under non-reducing conditions showed protein bands of approximately 100 kDa specific of male venoms. 2D-electrophoresis showed regions with varying spot complexity between pooled female and male venoms as well as spots that were gender specific. Gelatin zymography showed that female venoms contained proteinases of approximately 25 kDa absent from male venoms. Female venoms were more active than male venoms in degrading fibrinogen whereas on fibrin no significant differences were detected. Among various chromogenic peptide substrates tested, male venoms showed higher amidolytic activity than female venoms on D-Val-Leu-Lys-pNA and D-Phe-Pip-Arg-pNA. Taken together, these results show sex-based differences in the venom proteome of sibling snakes of a single litter raised under controlled conditions which seem to be genetically inherited and imposed by evolutionary forces.

Amides↗

Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis; better than a poke in the ICAT?

To date, the most widely used technology for conducting proteomic studies has been two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DGE), but this approach does have drawbacks. Isotope-coded affinity tagging (ICAT) is starting to challenge 2DGE as a new proteomic tool for the analysis of proteins in complex biological specimens. An appraisal of these two methodologies reveals that neither ICAT nor 2DGE provide comprehensive coverage on a proteome-wide scale.

Chromatography, Affinity↗

Origin of multicellular eukaryotes - insights from proteome comparisons.

The complete genomes of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans have recently become available allowing the comparison of the complete protein sets of a unicellular and multicellular eukaryote for the first time. These comparisons reveal some striking trends in terms of expansions or extensive shuffling of specific domains that are involved in regulatory functions and signaling. Similar comparisons with the available sequence data from the plant Arabidopsis thaliana produce consistent results. These observations have provided useful insights regarding the origin of multicellular organisms.

Animals↗

Proteomics reveals that proteins expressed during the early stage of Bacillus anthracis infection are potential targets for the development of vaccines and drugs.

In this review, we advance a new concept in developing vaccines and/or drugs to target specific proteins expressed during the early stage of Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) infection and address existing challenges to this concept. Three proteins (immune inhibitor A, GPR-like spore protease, and alanine racemase) initially identified by proteomics in our laboratory were found to have differential expressions during anthrax spore germination and early outgrowth. Other studies of different bacillus strains indicate that these three proteins are involved in either germination or cytotoxicity of spores, suggesting that they may serve as potential targets for the design of anti-anthrax vaccines and drugs.

Alanine Racemase↗

A Rapid Poly(ethylene glycol)-Assisted Magnetic Isolation Approach for High-Throughput Extracellular Vesicle Isolation and Subsequent Biomarker Analysis.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are crucial mediators of intercellular communication and have the potential to serve as biomarkers for disease diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring. However, most EV isolation methods often require large sample volumes and specialized instruments or involve trade-offs between purity, yield, cost, and scalability. We developed MagPEG, a workflow that combines poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-mediated EV aggregation with magnetic beads to provide a simple, reproducible alternative to ultracentrifugation, size-exclusion chromatography, and commercial precipitation kits. Our optimization experiments clarified the PEG concentration, ionic strength, and bead surface chemistry that collectively influence EV aggregation, capture efficiency, and contaminant coprecipitation, allowing us to define conditions that improve purity while maintaining high recovery. Compared with commonly used methods, MagPEG produced EVs with comparable size distribution, EV markers, and proteomic profiles while relying only on standard laboratory supplies. A key feature of the platform is that EVs and EV-associated DNA, RNA, and proteins can be sequentially extracted from the same bead-bound material, reducing sample loss and hands-on time and enabling multiomic analysis for limited clinical or small animal samples. MagPEG is compatible with downstream applications including proteomics, bead-based assays, and miRNA quantification. When applied to human serum, the method supported high-throughput EV proteomic profiling and enabled the identification of Alzheimer's disease-associated protein signatures, illustrating its utility for biomarker discovery. Overall, our results establish MagPEG as a powerful, rapid, scalable, and high-throughput solution for translational applications in biomarker discovery.

Polyethylene Glycols↗

Elucidation of factors responsible for enhanced thermal stability of proteins: a structural genomics based study.

Understanding the molecular basis for the enhanced stability of proteins from thermophiles has been hindered by a lack of structural data for homologous pairs of proteins from thermophiles and mesophiles. To overcome this difficulty, complete genome sequences from 9 thermophilic and 21 mesophilic bacterial genomes were aligned with protein sequences with known structures from the protein data bank. Sequences with high homology to proteins with known structures were chosen for further analysis. High quality models of these chosen sequences were obtained using homology modeling. The current study is based on a data set of models of 900 mesophilic and 300 thermophilic protein single chains and also includes 178 templates of known structure. Structural comparisons of models of homologous proteins allowed several factors responsible for enhanced thermostability to be identified. Several statistically significant, specific amino acid substitutions that occur going from mesophiles to thermophiles are identified. Most of these are at solvent-exposed sites. Salt bridges occur significantly more often in thermophiles. The additional salt bridges in thermophiles are almost exclusively in solvent-exposed regions, and 35% are in the same element of secondary structure. Helices in thermophiles are stabilized by intrahelical salt bridges and by an increase in negative charge at the N-terminus. There is an approximate decrease of 1% in the overall loop content and a corresponding increase in helical content in thermophiles. Previously overlooked cation-pi interactions, estimated to be twice as strong as ion-pairs, are significantly enriched in thermophiles. At buried sites, statistically significant hydrophobic amino acid substitutions are typically consistent with decreased side chain conformational entropy.

Archaeal Proteins↗

Comparisons of NMR spectral quality and success in crystallization demonstrate that NMR and X-ray crystallography are complementary methods for small protein structure determination.

X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy provide the only sources of experimental data from which protein structures can be analyzed at high or even atomic resolution. The degree to which these methods complement each other as sources of structural knowledge is a matter of debate; it is often proposed that small proteins yielding high quality, readily analyzed NMR spectra are a subset of those that readily yield strongly diffracting crystals. We have examined the correlation between NMR spectral quality and success in structure determination by X-ray crystallography for 159 prokaryotic and eukaryotic proteins, prescreened to avoid proteins providing polydisperse and/or aggregated samples. This study demonstrates that, across this protein sample set, the quality of a protein's [15N-1H]-heteronuclear correlation (HSQC) spectrum recorded under conditions generally suitable for 3D structure determination by NMR, a key predictor of the ability to determine a structure by NMR, is not correlated with successful crystallization and structure determination by X-ray crystallography. These results, together with similar results of an independent study presented in the accompanying paper (Yee, et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., accompanying paper), demonstrate that X-ray crystallography and NMR often provide complementary sources of structural data and that both methods are required in order to optimize success for as many targets as possible in large-scale structural proteomics efforts.

Animals↗

Identification of marker proteins for the adulteration of meat products with soybean proteins by multidimensional liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

Soybean proteins are frequently added to processed meat products for economic reasons and to improve their functional properties. Monitoring of the addition of soybean protein to meat products is of high interest due to the existence of regulations forbidding or limiting the amount of soybean proteins that can be added during the processing of meat products. We have used chromatographic prefractionation on the protein level by perfusion liquid chromatography to isolate peaks of interest from extracts of soybean protein isolate (SPI) and of meat products containing SPI. After enzymatic digestion using trypsin, the collected fractions were analyzed by nanoflow liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Several variants and subunits of the major seed proteins, glycinin and beta-conglycinin, were identified in SPI, along with two other proteins. In soybean-protein-containing meat samples, different glycinin A subunits could be identified from the peak discriminating between samples with and without soybean proteins added. Among those, glycinin G4 subunit A4 was consistently found in all samples. Consequently, this protein (subunit) can be used as a target for new analytical techniques in the course of identifying the addition of soybean protein to meat products.

Animals↗

Statistical analysis of membrane proteome expression changes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

We have devised an approach for analyzing shotgun proteomics datasets based on the normalized spectral abundance factor that can be used for quantitative proteomics analysis. Three biological replicates of samples enriched for plasma membranes were isolated from S. cerevisiae grown in 14N-rich media and 15N-minimal media and analyzed via quantitative multidimensional protein identification technology. The natural log transformation of NSAF values from S. cerevisiae cells grown in 14N YPD media and 15N-minimal media had a normal distribution. The t-test analysis demonstrated 221 of 1316 proteins were significantly overexpressed in one or the other growth conditions with a p value <0.05. Notably, amino acid transporters were among the 14 membrane proteins that were significantly upregulated in cells grown in minimal media, and we functionally validated these increases in protein expression with radioisotope uptake assays for selected proteins.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗

Prediction of liquid chromatographic retention times of peptides generated by protease digestion of the Escherichia coli proteome using artificial neural networks.

We developed a computational method to predict the retention times of peptides in HPLC using artificial neural networks (ANN). We performed stepwise multiple linear regressions and selected for ANN input amino acids that significantly affected the LC retention time. Unlike conventional linear models, the trained ANN accurately predicted the retention time of peptides containing up to 50 amino acid residues. In 834 peptides, there was a strong correlation (R2 = 0.928) between measured and predicted retention times. We demonstrated the utility of our method by the prediction of the retention time of 121,273 peptides resulting from LysC-digestion of the Escherichia coli proteome. Our approach is useful for the proteome-wide characterization of peptides and the identification of unknown peptide peaks obtained in proteome analysis.

Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid↗

Characterization of the human pancreatic islet proteome by two-dimensional LC/MS/MS.

The pancreatic beta-cell plays a central role in the maintenance of glucose homeostasis and in the pathogenesis of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Elucidation of the insulin secretory defects observed in diabetes first requires a better understanding of the complex mechanisms regulating insulin secretion, which are only partly understood. While there have been reports detailing proteomic analyses of islet cell lines or isolated rodent islets, the information gained is not always applicable to humans. Therefore, definition of the human islet proteome could contribute to a better understanding of islet biology and lead to more effective treatment strategies. We have applied a two-dimensional LC-MS/MS-based analysis to the characterization of the human islet proteome, resulting in the confident identification of 29,021 different tryptic peptides covering 3365 proteins (> or =2 unique peptide identifications per protein). As expected, the three major islet hormones (insulin, glucagon, and somatostatin) were detected, as well as various beta-cell enriched secretory products, ion channels, and transcription factors. In addition, significant proteome coverage of metabolic enzymes and cellular pathways was observed, including the integrin signaling cascade and the MAP kinase, NF-kappa beta, and JAK/STAT pathways. The resulting peptide reference library provides a resource for future higher throughput and quantitative studies of islet biology.

Chromatography, Liquid↗

Proteomic analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae under high gravity fermentation conditions.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae KAY446 was utilized for ethanol production, with glucose concentrations ranging from 120 g/L (normal) to 300 g/L (high). Although grown in a high glucose environment, S. cerevisiae still retained the ability to produce ethanol with a high degree of glucose utilization. iTRAQ-mediated shotgun proteomics was applied to identify relative expression change of proteins under the different glucose conditions. A total of 413 proteins were identified from three replicate, independent LC-MS/MS runs. Unsurprisingly, many proteins in the glycolysis/gluconeogenesis pathway showed significant changes in expression level. Twenty five proteins involved in amino acid metabolism decreased their expression, while the expressions of 12 heat-shock related proteins were also identified. Under high glucose conditions, ethanol was produced as a major product. However, the assimilation of glucose as well as a number of byproducts was also enhanced. Therefore, to optimize the ethanol production under very high gravity conditions, a number of pathways will need to be deactivated, while still maintaining the correct cellular redox or osmotic state. Proteomics is demonstrated here as a tool to aid in this forward metabolic engineering.

Ethanol↗

Ten thousand interactions for the molecular biologist.

Previous studies have suggested that nature is restricted to about 1,000 protein folds to perform a great diversity of functions. Here, we use protein interaction data from different sources and three-dimensional structures to suggest that the total number of interaction types is also limited, and estimate that most interactions in nature will conform to one of about 10,000 types. We currently know fewer than 2,000, and at the present rate of structure determination, it will be more than 20 years before we know a full representative set.

Cell Physiological Phenomena↗

The proteome of Mycoplasma genitalium. Chaps-soluble component.

Mycoplasma genitalium is the smallest member of the class Mollicutes, with a genome size of 580 kb. It has the potential to express 480 gene products, and is therefore considered to be an excellent model to assess: (a) the minimum metabolism required by a free living cell; and (b) proteomic technologies and the information obtained by proteome analysis. Here, we report on the most complete proteome observed at 73% (expected proteome), and analysed at 33% (reported proteome). The use of four overlapping pH windows in conjunction with SDS/PAGE has allowed 427 distinct proteins to be resolved in association with the exponential growth of M. genitalium. Proof of expression for 201 proteins of sufficient abundance on silver stained two-dimensional gels was obtained using peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) of which 158 were identified. The potential for gene product modification in even the simplest known self-replicating organism was quantified at a ratio of 1.22 : 1, more proteins than genes. A reduction in protein expression of 42% was observed for post-exponentially-grown cells. DnaK, GroEL, DNA gyrase, and a cytadherence accessory protein were significantly elevated, while some ribosomal proteins were reduced in relative abundance. The strengths and weaknesses of techniques employed were assessed with respect to the observed and predicted proteome derived from DNA sequence information. Proteomics was shown to provide a perspective into the biochemical and metabolic activities of this organism, beyond that obtainable by sequencing alone.

Bacterial Proteins↗