Selected reaction monitoring (SRM)—also known as multiple reaction monitoring (MRM)—has emerged as a promising high-throughput targeted protein quantification technology for candidate biomarker verification and systems biology applications. A major bottleneck for current SRM technology, however, is insufficient sensitivity for e.g., detecting low-abundance biomarkers likely present at the low ng/mL to pg/mL range in human blood plasma or serum, or extremely low-abundance signaling proteins in cells or tissues. Herein we review recent advances in methods and technologies, including front-end immunoaffinity depletion, fractionation, selective enrichment of target proteins/peptides including posttranslational modifications (PTMs), as well as advances in MS instrumentation which have significantly enhanced the overall sensitivity of SRM assays and enabled the detection of low-abundance proteins at low to sub- ng/mL level in human blood plasma or serum. General perspectives on the potential of achieving sufficient sensitivity for detection of pg/mL level proteins in plasma are also discussed.

Reversible modifications of cysteine thiols play a significant role in redox signaling and regulation. A number of reversible redox modifications, including disulfide formation, S-nitrosylation, and S-glutathionylation, have been recognized for their significance in various physiological and pathological processes. Here we describe a procedure for the enrichment of peptides containing reversible cysteine modifications. Starting with tissue or cell lysate samples, all of the unmodified free thiols are blocked using N-ethylmaleimide (NEM). This is followed by the selective reduction of those cysteines bearing the reversible modification(s) of interest. The reduction is achieved by using different reducing reagents that react specifically with each type of cysteine modification (e.g., ascorbate for S-nitrosylation). This protocol serves as a general approach for enrichment of thiol-containing proteins or peptides derived from reversibly modified proteins. The approach utilizes a commercially available thiol-affinity resin (Thiopropyl Sepharose 6B) to directly capture free thiol-containing proteins through a disulfide exchange reaction followed by on-resin protein digestion and multiplexed isobaric labeling to facilitate LC–MS/MS based quantitative site-specific analysis of cysteine-based reversible modifications. The overall approach requires a simpler workflow with increased specificity compared to the commonly used biotinylation-based assays. The procedure for selective enrichment and analyses of S-nitrosylation and the level of total reversible cysteine modifications (or total oxidation) is presented to demonstrate the utility of this general strategy. The entire protocol requires approximately 3 days for sample processing with an additional day for LC-MS/MS and data analysis.

Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease (APE1) is an essential base excision repair protein that also functions as a reduction/oxidation (redox) factor in mammals. Through a thiol-based mechanism, APE1 reduces a number of important transcription factors including AP-1, p53, NF-κB, and HIF-1α. What is known about the mechanism to date is that the buried Cys residues 65 and 93 are critical for APE1’s redox activity. To further detail the redox mechanism, we developed a chemical footprinting/mass spectrometric assay using N-ethylmaleimide (NEM), an irreversible Cys modifier, to characterize the interaction of the redox inhibitor, E3330, with APE1. When incubated with E3330, two NEM-modified products were observed, one with 2 and a second with 7 added NEMs; this latter product corresponds to a fully modified APE1. In a similar control reaction without E3330, only the +2NEM product was observed in which the two solvent accessible Cys residues, C99 and C138, were modified by NEM. Through hydrogen-deuterium amide exchange with analysis by mass spectrometry, we found that the +7NEM modified species incorporates approximately 40 more deuterium atoms than the native protein, which exchanges nearly identically as the +2NEM product, suggesting that APE1 can be trapped in a partially unfolded state. E3330 was also found to increase disulfide bond formation involving redox critical Cys residues in APE1 as assessed by LC-MS/MS, suggesting a basis for its inhibitory effects on APE1’s redox activity. Collectively, our results suggest that APE1 adopts a partially unfolded state, which we propose is the redox active form of the enzyme.

Reversible protein thiol oxidation is an essential regulatory mechanism of photosynthesis, metabolism, and gene expression in photosynthetic organisms. Herein, we present proteome-wide quantitative and site-specific profiling of in vivo thiol oxidation modulated by light/dark in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, an oxygenic photosynthetic prokaryote, using a resin-assisted thiol enrichment approach. Our proteomic approach integrates resin-assisted enrichment with isobaric tandem mass tag labeling to enable site-specific and quantitative measurements of reversibly oxidized thiols. The redox dynamics of ϳ2,100 Cys-sites from 1,060 proteins under light, dark, and 3-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)-1,1-dimethylurea (a photosystem II inhibitor) conditions were quantified. In addition to relative quantification, the stoichiometry or percentage of oxidation (reversibly oxidized/total thiols) for ϳ1,350 Cys-sites was also quantified. The overall results revealed broad changes in thiol oxidation in many key biological processes, including photosynthetic electron transport, carbon fixation, and glycolysis. Moreover,

S-glutathionylation (SSG) is an important regulatory posttranslational modification on protein cysteine (Cys) thiols, yet the role of specific cysteine residues as targets of modification is poorly understood. We report a novel quantitative mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomic method for site-specific identification and quantification of S-glutathionylation across different conditions. Briefly, this approach consists of initial blocking of free thiols by alkylation, selective reduction of glutathionylated thiols and covalent capture of reduced thiols using thiol affinity resins, followed by on-resin tryptic digestion and isobaric labeling with iTRAQ (isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation) for MS-based identification and quantification. The overall approach was initially validated by application to RAW 264.7 mouse macrophages treated with different doses of diamide to induce glutathionylation. A total of 1071 Cys-sites from 690 proteins were identified in response to diamide treatment, with ~90% of the sites displaying >2-fold increases in SSGmodification compared to controls. This approach was extended to identify potential SSGmodified Cys-sites in response to H 2 O 2 , an endogenous oxidant produced by activated macrophages and many pathophysiological stimuli. The results revealed 364 Cys-sites from 265 proteins that were sensitive to S-glutathionylation in response to H 2 O 2 treatment, thus providing a database of proteins and Cys-sites susceptible to this modification under oxidative stress. Functional analysis revealed that the most significantly enriched molecular function categories for proteins sensitive to SSG modifications were free radical scavenging and cell death/survival. Overall the results demonstrate that our approach is effective for site-specific identification and quantification of SSG-modified proteins. The analytical strategy also provides a unique approach to determining the major pathways and cellular processes most susceptible to S-glutathionylation under stress conditions.

APE1 is a multifunctional protein possessing DNA repair and redox activation of transcription factors. Blocking these functions leads to apoptosis, antiangiogenesis, cell-growth inhibition, and other effects, depending on which function is blocked. Because a selective inhibitor of the APE redox function has potential as a novel anticancer therapeutic, new analogues of E3330 were synthesized. Mass spectrometry was used to characterize the interactions of the analogues (RN8-51, 10-52, and 7-60) with APE1. RN10-52 and RN7-60 were found to react rapidly with APE1, forming covalent adducts, whereas RN8-51 reacted reversibly. Median inhibitory concentration (IC(50) values of all three compounds were significantly lower than that of E3330. EMSA, transactivation assays, and endothelial tube growth-inhibition analysis demonstrated the specificity of E3330 and its analogues in blocking the APE1 redox function and demonstrated that the analogues had up to a sixfold greater effect than did E3330. Studies using cancer cell lines demonstrated that E3330 and one analogue, RN8-51, decreased the cell line growth with little apoptosis, whereas the third, RN7-60, caused a dramatic effect. RN8-51 shows particular promise for further anticancer therapeutic development. This progress in synthesizing and isolating biologically active novel E3330 analogues that effectively inhibit the APE1 redox function validates the utility of further translational anticancer therapeutic development.

Apurinic/apyrmidinic endonuclease (APE1) is an unusual nuclear redox factor in which the redox-active cysteines identified to date, C65 and C93, are surface inaccessible residues whose activities may be influenced by partial unfolding of APE1. To assess the role of the remaining five cysteines in APE1’s redox activity, double cysteine mutants were analyzed excluding C65A, which is redox-inactive as a single mutant. C93A/C99A APE1 was found to be redox-inactive whereas other double cysteine mutants retained the same redox activity as that observed for C93A APE1. To determine whether these three cysteines, C65, C93, and C99, were sufficient for redox activity, all other cysteines were substituted with alanine, and this protein was shown to be fully redox active. Mutants with impaired redox activity failed to stimulate cell proliferation, establishing an important role for APE1’s redox activity in cell growth. Disulfide bond formation upon oxidation of APE1 was analyzed by proteolysis of the protein followed by mass spectrometry analysis. Within 5 min. of exposure to hydrogen peroxide, a single disulfide bond formed between C65 and C138 followed by the formation of three additional disulfide bonds within 15 min.; ten total disulfide bonds formed within one hour. A single mixed-disulfide bond involving C99 of APE1 was observed for the reaction of oxidized APE1 with TRX. Disulfide-bonded species of APE1 or APE1/TRX were further characterized by size exclusion chromatography and found to form large complexes. Taken together, our data suggest that APE1 is a unique redox factor with properties distinct from those of other redox factors.

Anterior gradient 2 (AGR2) is a secreted, cancer-associated protein in many types of epithelial cancer cells. We developed a highly sensitive targeted mass spectrometric assay for quantification of AGR2 in urine and serum. Digested peptides from clinical samples were processed by PRISM (high pressure and high resolution separations coupled with intelligent selection and multiplexing), which incorporates high pH reversed-phase LC separations to fractionate and select target fractions for follow-on LC-SRM analyses. The PRISM-SRM assay for AGR2 showed a reproducibility of <10% CV and LOQ values of ~130 pg/mL in serum and ~10 pg per 100 μg total protein mass in urine, respectively. A good correlation (R2 = 0.91) was observed for the measurable AGR2 concentrations in urine between SRM and ELISA. Based on an initial cohort of 37 subjects, urinary AGR2/PSA concentration ratios showed a significant difference (P = 0.026) between non-cancer and cancer. Large clinical cohort studies are needed for the validation of AGR2 as a useful diagnostic biomarker for prostate cancer. Our work validated the approach of identifying candidate secreted protein biomarkers through genomics and measurement by targeted proteomics, especially for proteins where no immunoassays are available.