A Tandem Mass Spectrometry Sequence Database Search Method for Identification of O-Fucosylated Proteins by Mass Spectrometry

Kristian E. Swearingen, Jimmy K. Eng, David Shteynberg, Vladimir Vigdorovich, Timothy A. Springer, Luis Mendoza, D. Noah Sather, Eric W. Deutsch, Stefan H.I. Kappe, Robert L. Moritz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Thrombospondin type 1 repeats (TSRs), small adhesive protein domains with a wide range of functions, are usually modified with O-linked fucose, which may be extended to O-fucose-β1,3-glucose. Collision-induced dissociation (CID) spectra of O-fucosylated peptides cannot be sequenced by standard tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) sequence database search engines because O-linked glycans are highly labile in the gas phase and are effectively absent from the CID peptide fragment spectra, resulting in a large mass error. Electron transfer dissociation (ETD) preserves O-linked glycans on peptide fragments, but only a subset of tryptic peptides with low m/z can be reliably sequenced from ETD spectra compared to CID. Accordingly, studies to date that have used MS to identify O-fucosylated TSRs have required manual interpretation of CID mass spectra even when ETD was also employed. In order to facilitate high-throughput, automatic identification of O-fucosylated peptides from CID spectra, we re-engineered the MS/MS sequence database search engine Comet and the MS data analysis suite Trans-Proteomic Pipeline to enable automated sequencing of peptides exhibiting the neutral losses characteristic of labile O-linked glycans. We used our approach to reanalyze published proteomics data from Plasmodium parasites and identified multiple glycoforms of TSR-containing proteins.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)652-663
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Proteome Research
Volume18
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • C-mannosylation
  • O-fucosylation
  • Plasmodium
  • thrombospondin type 1 repeat

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