Selected reaction monitoring on a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer is currently experiencing a renaissance within the proteomics community for its, as yet, unparalleled ability to characterize and quantify a set of proteins reproducibly, completely, and with high sensitivity. Given the immense benefit that high resolution and accurate mass instruments have brought to the discovery proteomics field, we wondered if highly accurate mass measurement capabilities could be leveraged to provide benefits in the targeted proteomics domain as well. Here, we propose a new targeted proteomics paradigm centered on the use of next generation, quadrupole-equipped high resolution and accurate mass instruments: parallel reaction monitoring (PRM). In PRM, the third quadrupole of a triple quadrupole is substituted with a high resolution and accurate mass mass analyzer to permit the parallel detection of all target product ions in one, concerted high resolution mass analysis. We detail the analytical performance of the PRM method, using a quadrupoleequipped bench-top Orbitrap MS, and draw a performance comparison to selected reaction monitoring in terms of run-to-run reproducibility, dynamic range, and measurement accuracy. In addition to requiring minimal upfront method development and facilitating automated data analysis, PRM yielded quantitative data over a wider dynamic range than selected reaction monitoring in the presence of a yeast background matrix because of PRM's high selectivity in the mass-to-charge domain. With achievable linearity over the quantifiable dynamic range found to be statistically equal between the two methods, our investigation suggests that PRM will be a promising new addition to the quantitative proteomics toolbox. Molecular & Cellular Proteomics 11: 10.1074/ mcp.O112.020131, 1475-1488, 2012.The most widespread protein sequencing technique is the shotgun method. Proteins are digested into peptides, chromatographically separated, and measured by mass spectrometers (1-10). Many types of mass spectrometers are used-quadrupole ion traps, quadrupole ion trap hybrids such as the QLT (quadrupole linear ion trap)-Orbitrap or QLT-FT-ICR, and quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) hybrids-but, the experiments, from the MS measurement onward, are basically identical: the masses of eluting cationic peptide precursors are measured in a MS scan, and the most abundant precursors are selected in series for successive tandem MS events (MS/MS). This process, called data-dependent acquisition, continues for the duration of a chromatographic separation, and constant MS operation in this manner can generate hundreds of thousands of spectra in days. These spectra are then mapped to peptide or protein sequence databases using highly-evolved database search algorithms (11-13). Successful results can be obtained within just a few days and are nothing short of spectacular: tens of thousands of unique peptide spectral matches mapping to several thousand unique protein isoforms have become the norm. Although this approach certainly ...

Summary Calorie restriction (CR) extends lifespan in diverse species. Mitochondria play a key role in CR adaptation, however, the molecular details remain elusive. We developed and applied a quantitative mass spectrometry method to probe the liver mitochondrial acetyl-proteome during CR vs. control diet in mice that were wild-type or lacked the protein deacetylase SIRT3. Quantification of 3,285 acetylation sites −2,193 from mitochondrial proteins rendered a comprehensive atlas of the acetyl-proteome and enabled global site-specific, relative acetyl occupancy measurements between all four experimental conditions. Bioinformatic and biochemical analyses provided additional support for the effects of specific acetylation on mitochondrial protein function. Our results (1) reveal widespread reprogramming of mitochondrial protein acetylation in response to CR and SIRT3, (2) identify three biochemically distinct classes of acetylation sites, and (3) provide evidence that SIRT3 is a prominent regulator in CR adaptation by coordinately deacetylating proteins involved in diverse pathways of metabolism and mitochondrial maintenance.

We describe the comprehensive analysis of the yeast proteome in just over one hour of optimized analysis. We achieve this expedited proteome characterization with improved sample preparation, chromatographic separations, and by using a new Orbitrap hybrid mass spectrometer equipped with a mass filter, a collision cell, a high-field Orbitrap analyzer, and, finally, a dual cell linear ion trap analyzer (Q-OT-qIT, Orbitrap Fusion). This system offers high MS2 acquisition speed of 20 Hz and detects up to 19 peptide sequences within a single second of operation. Over a 1.3 h chromatographic method, the Q-OT-qIT hybrid collected an average of 13,447 MS1 and 80,460 MS2 scans (per run) to produce 43,400 (x̄) peptide spectral matches and 34,255 (x̄) peptides with unique amino acid sequences (1% false discovery rate (FDR)). On average, each one hour analysis achieved detection of 3,977 proteins (1% FDR). We conclude that further improvements in mass spectrometer scan rate could render comprehensive analysis of the human proteome within a few hours.

Liquid chromatography (LC) prefractionation is often implemented to increase proteomic coverage; however, while effective, this approach is laborious, requires considerable sample amount, and can be cumbersome. We describe how interfacing a recently described high-field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) device between a nanoelectrospray ionization (nanoESI) emitter and an Orbitrap hybrid mass spectrometer (MS) enables the collection of single-shot proteomic data with comparable depth to that of conventional two-dimensional LC approaches. This next generation FAIMS device incorporates improved ion sampling at the ESI-FAIMS interface, increased electric field strength, and a helium-free ion transport gas. With fast internal compensation voltage (CV) stepping (25 ms/transition), multiple unique gas-phase fractions may be analyzed simultaneously over the course of an MS analysis. We have comprehensively demonstrated how this device performs for bottom-up proteomics experiments as well as characterized the effects of peptide charge state, mass loading, analysis time, and additional variables. We also offer recommendations for the number of CVs and which CVs to use for different lengths of experiments. Internal CV stepping experiments increase protein identifications from a single-shot experiment to >8000, from over 100 000 peptide identifications in as little as 5 h. In single-shot 4 h label-free quantitation (LFQ) experiments of a human cell line, we quantified 7818 proteins with FAIMS using intra-analysis CV switching compared to 6809 without FAIMS. Single-shot FAIMS results also compare favorably with LC fractionation experiments. A 6 h single-shot FAIMS experiment generates 8007 protein identifications, while four fractions analyzed for 1.5 h each produce 7776 protein identifications.

Combining high mass accuracy mass spectrometry, isobaric tagging, and novel software for multiplexed, large-scale protein quantification, we report deep proteomic coverage across multiple biological replicates and cell lines. We applied this method to study four human embryonic stem cell and four induced pluripotent stem cell lines in biological triplicate, a 24-sample comparison resulting in the largest set of identified proteins and phosphorylation sites in pluripotent cells to date. The statistical analysis afforded by this approach revealed, for the first time, subtle but reproducible differences in protein and protein phosphorylation between embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent cells. Merging these results with RNA-seq analyses, we found functionally related differences across each tier of regulation. Finally, we introduce the Stem Cell–Omics Repository (SCOR), a resource that collates and displays quantitative information across multiple planes of measurement, including mRNA, protein, and post-translational modifications.

The ProteomeTools project builds molecular and digital tools from the human proteome to facilitate biomedical and life science research. Here, we report the generation and multimodal LC-MS/MS analysis of >330,000 synthetic tryptic peptides representing essentially all canonical human gene products and exemplify the utility of this data. The resource will be extended to >1 million peptides and all data will be shared with the community via ProteomicsDB and proteomeXchange.

Multiplexed quantitative analyses of complex proteomes enable deep biological insight. While a multitude of workflows have been developed for multiplexed analyses, the most quantitatively accurate method (SPS-MS3) suffers from long acquisition duty cycles. We built a new, real-time database search (RTS) platform, Orbiter, to combat the SPS-MS3 method's longer duty cycles. RTS with Orbiter eliminates SPS-MS3 scans if no peptide matches to a given spectrum. With Orbiter's online proteomic analytical pipeline, which includes RTS and false discovery rate analysis, it was possible to process a single spectrum database search in less than 10 ms. The result is a fast, functional means to identify peptide spectral matches using Comet, filter these matches, and more efficiently quantify proteins of interest. Importantly, the use of Comet for peptide spectral matching allowed for a fully featured search, including analysis of post-translational modifications, with well-known and extensively validated scoring. These data could then be used to trigger subsequent scans in an adaptive and flexible manner. In this work we tested the utility of this adaptive data acquisition platform to improve the efficiency and accuracy of multiplexed quantitative experiments. We found that RTS enabled a 2-fold increase in mass spectrometric data acquisition efficiency. Orbiter's RTS quantified more than 8000 proteins across 10 proteomes in half the time of an SPS-MS3 analysis (18 h for RTS, 36 h for SPS-MS3).

Multiplexed, isobaric tagging methods are powerful techniques to increase throughput, precision, and accuracy in quantitative proteomics. The dynamic range and accuracy of quantitation, however, can be limited by coisolation of tag-containing peptides that release reporter ions and conflate quantitative measurements across precursors. Methods to alleviate these effects often lead to the loss of protein and peptide identifications through online or offline filtering of interference containing spectra. To alleviate this effect, high-Field Asymmetric-waveform Ion Mobility Spectroscopy (FAIMS) has been proposed as a method to reduce precursor coisolation and improve the accuracy and dynamic range of multiplex quantitation. Here we tested the use of FAIMS to improve quantitative accuracy using previously established TMT-based interference standards (triple-knockout [TKO] and Human-Yeast Proteomics Resource [HYPER]). We observed that FAIMS robustly improved the quantitative accuracy of both high-resolution MS 2 (HRMS 2 ) and synchronous precursor selection MS 3 (SPS-MS 3 )-based methods without sacrificing protein identifications. We further optimized and characterized the main factors that enable robust use of FAIMS for multiplexed quantitation. We highlight these factors and provide method recommendations to take advantage of FAIMS technology to improve isobaric-tag-quantification moving forward.