We recently proposed a comparative proteomic method utilizing proteolytic 18 Large scale quantitative measurements of protein expressions in different sets of samples (comparative proteomics) are expected to be critical to the advance of our understanding of physiological processes and disease mechanisms. Although 2D 1 PAGE-based methods have been the primary choice in comparative proteomics, 2D gels are cumbersome to run, have a poor dynamic range, and are biased toward abundant and soluble proteins (1). Therefore alternative methods have been actively sought. One such method is mass spectrometry-based in vitro stable isotope labeling in which proteins from the control and experimental samples are proteolytically digested. The generated peptides from the control sample are then labeled with naturally abundant (light) isotope(s), whereas the peptides from the experimental sample are labeled with its heavier isotope(s) or vice versa. The samples are then mixed together in equal proportions, and the relative abundance of each particular peptide from the two samples is determined by mass spectrometry. By comparing the peak areas or intensities of the light and heavy peptides, the relative abundance of each particular peptide can be determined; this equals the relative abundance in the original samples of the parent protein from which the peptide was generated.Among the mass spectrometry-based in vitro stable isotope labeling methods, the proteolytic 18 O labeling method (2) is particularly attractive because it has the least technical variations. In this method, the stable isotopic ( 18 O atom) labeling of peptides is achieved concurrently with the proteolytic digestion of proteins. Therefore the yield of each isotopically labeled peptide depends only on the effectiveness of proteolytic digestion in both samples compared. In contrast, the other in vitro stable isotope labeling methods (such as the isotope-coded affinity tag method (3)) have the isotopic labeling and proteolytic digestion of proteins occurring at different steps, meaning that the yield of each isotopically labeled peptide has greater variability because it depends on both the yield of the isotope labeling and the effectiveness of the proteolytic digestion.Trypsin has been the protease most utilized in proteolytic 18 O labeling methods. However, it is known that trypsin generates a mixture of isotopic isoforms resulting from the variable incorporation of either one or two 18 O atoms ( 18 O 1 / 18 O 2 ) into each peptide (4). This not only makes quantification of the peptides complicated but also increases the error in the experimentally determined 16 O-and 18 O-labeled peptides ratios. We recently reported a Lys-N-based technique, which is advantageous over tryptic digestion because it incorporates only a single 18 O atom into the carboxyl terminus of each proteolytically generated peptide (5). Lys-N is a metalloendopeptidase (peptidyl-Lys metalloendopeptidase, EC 3.4.24.20) that cleaves specifically peptidyl-lysine bonds (-XLys-) in proteins and pe...