In order to assess the biological function of proteins and their modifications for understanding signaling mechanisms within cells as well as specific biomarkers to disease, it is important that quantitative information be obtained under different experimental conditions. Stable isotope labeling is a powerful method for accurately determining changes in the levels of proteins and PTMs; however, isotope labeling experiments suffer from limited dynamic range resulting in signal change ratios of less than ,20:1 using most commercial mass spectrometers. Label-free approaches to relative quantification in proteomics such as spectral counting have gained popularity since no additional chemistries are needed. Here, we show a label-free method for relative quantification based on the TIC from peptide MS/MS spectra collected from data-dependent runs can be used effectively as a quantitative measure and expands the dynamic range over isotope labeling experiments allowing for abundance differences up to ,60:1 in a screen for proteins that bind to phosphotyrosine residues.
Keywords:Differential expression / Quantitative analysis / Shotgun proteomics / Signal transduction profiling 994 Proteomics 2008, 8, 994-999 Methods for acquiring quantitative proteomics data are continually developing with very accurate stable isotope labeling (SIL) and label-free approaches. SIL provides chemically equivalent but isotopically different internal standards for each peptide/protein for direct comparison of mass spectral signal intensities that represent relative abundance. Common SIL strategies include protein level labeling strategies such as stable isotope labeling of amino acids in cell culture (SILAC) [1], a global method whereby all translated proteins have isotope labels metabolically incorporated at selected amino acid residues, and isotope-coded affinity tags (ICAT) [2], a technique that labels cysteine residues at the protein level. Peptide level labeling strategies include multiplexed isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) [3], global internal standard technology (GIST) [4], a global post-digestion labeling method that labels primary amine groups (peptide N-terminus and lysine residues) and an extension of GIST called in-gel stable isotope labeling (ISIL) [5,6], a method that labels primary amine groups of proteins (protein N-terminus and lysine residues) directly from gel separated samples. Each isotope labeling strategy has its advantages and disadvantages depending upon the experimental questions but most suffer from an experimental Proteomics 2008, 8, 994-999 Cell Biology 995 dynamic range limitation of ,20:1. Protein level differences greater than this limit usually suffer from very large errors in ratio determination [7]. Label-free approaches to quantitative proteomics have gained prominence in recent years since no additional chemistry or sample preparation steps are required. These include biostatistical profiling [8,9] in clinical proteomics whereby peptide ions that show intensity chang...