A novel two-stage tandem mass spectrometry approach and scoring scheme for the identification of O-GlcNAc modified peptides

O-GlcNAc informatics: advances and trends

As a post-translational modification, protein glycosylation is critical in health and disease. O-Linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification (O-GlcNAcylation), as an intracellular monosaccharide modification on proteins, was discovered 40 years ago. Thanks to technological advances, the physiological and pathological significance of O-GlcNAcylation has been gradually revealed and widely appreciated, especially in recent years. O-GlcNAc informatics has been quickly evolving. Clearly, O-GlcNAc informatics tools have not only facilitated O-GlcNAc functional studies, but also provided us a unique perspective on protein O-GlcNAcylation. In this article, we review O-GlcNAc-focused software tools and servers that have been developed for O-GlcNAc research over the past four decades. Specifically, we will (1) survey bioinformatics tools that have facilitated O-GlcNAc proteomics data analysis, (2) introduce databases/servers for O-GlcNAc proteins/sites that have been experimentally identified by individual research labs, (3) describe software tools that have been developed to predict O-GlcNAc sites, and (4) introduce platforms cataloging proteins that interact with the O-GlcNAc cycling enzymes (i.e., O-GlcNAc transferase and O-GlcNAcase). We hope these resources will provide useful information to both experienced researchers and new incomers to the O-GlcNAc field. We anticipate that this review provides a framework to stimulate the future development of more sophisticated informatic tools for O-GlcNAc research.

An overview of tools to decipher O-GlcNAcylation from historical approaches to new insights

O-GlcNAcylation is a post-translational modification which affects approximately 5000 human proteins. Its involvement has been shown in many if not all biological processes. Variations in O-GlcNAcylation levels can be associated with the development of diseases. Deciphering the role of O-GlcNAcylation is an important issue to (i) understand its involvement in pathophysiological development and (ii) develop new therapeutic strategies to modulate O-GlcNAc levels. Over the past 30 years, despite the development of several approaches, knowledge of its role and regulation have remained limited. This review proposes an overview of the currently available tools to study O-GlcNAcylation and identify O-GlcNAcylated proteins. Briefly, we discuss pharmacological modulators, methods to study O-GlcNAcylation levels and approaches for O-GlcNAcylomic profiling. This review aims to contribute to a better understanding of the methods used to study O-GlcNAcylation and to promote efforts in the development of new strategies to explore this promising modification.

Methods for Enrichment and Assignment of N-Acetylglucosamine Modification Sites

O-GlcNAcylation, the addition of a single N-acetylglucosamine residue to serine and threonine residues of cytoplasmic, nuclear, or mitochondrial proteins, is a widespread regulatory posttranslational modification. It is involved in the response to nutritional status and stress, and its dysregulation is associated with diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to diabetes. Although the modification was first detected over 35 years ago, research into the function of O-GlcNAcylation has accelerated dramatically in the last 10 years owing to the development of new enrichment and mass spectrometry techniques that facilitate its analysis. This article summarizes methods for O-GlcNAc enrichment, key mass spectrometry instrumentation advancements, particularly those that allow modification site localization, and software tools that allow analysis of data from O-GlcNAc-modified peptides.

O-GlcNAcylation of PERIOD regulates its interaction with CLOCK and timing of circadian transcriptional repression

Circadian clocks coordinate time-of-day-specific metabolic and physiological processes to maximize organismal performance and fitness. In addition to light and temperature, which are regarded as strong zeitgebers for circadian clock entrainment, metabolic input has now emerged as an important signal for clock entrainment and modulation. Circadian clock proteins have been identified to be substrates of O-GlcNAcylation, a nutrient sensitive post-translational modification (PTM), and the interplay between clock protein O-GlcNAcylation and other PTMs is now recognized as an important mechanism by which metabolic input regulates circadian physiology. To better understand the role of O-GlcNAcylation in modulating clock protein function within the molecular oscillator, we used mass spectrometry proteomics to identify O-GlcNAcylation sites of PERIOD (PER), a repressor of the circadian transcriptome and a critical biochemical timer of the Drosophila clock. In vivo functional characterization of PER O-GlcNAcylation sites indicates that O-GlcNAcylation at PER(S942) reduces interactions between PER and CLOCK (CLK), the key transcriptional activator of clock-controlled genes. Since we observe a correlation between clock-controlled daytime feeding activity and higher level of PER O-GlcNAcylation, we propose that PER(S942) O-GlcNAcylation during the day functions to prevent premature initiation of circadian repression phase. This is consistent with the period-shortening behavioral phenotype of per(S942A) flies. Taken together, our results support that clock-controlled feeding activity provides metabolic signals to reinforce light entrainment to regulate circadian physiology at the post-translational level. The interplay between O-GlcNAcylation and other PTMs to regulate circadian physiology is expected to be complex and extensive, and reach far beyond the molecular oscillator.

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

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.

Combined Antibody/Lectin Enrichment Identifies Extensive Changes in the O-GlcNAc Sub-proteome upon Oxidative Stress

O-Linked N-acetyl-β-d-glucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is a dynamic post-translational modification that modifies and regulates over 3000 nuclear, cytoplasmic, and mitochondrial proteins. Upon exposure to stress and injury, cells and tissues increase the O-GlcNAc modification, or O-GlcNAcylation, of numerous proteins promoting the cellular stress response and thus survival. The aim of this study was to identify proteins that are differentially O-GlcNAcylated upon acute oxidative stress (H₂O₂) to provide insight into the mechanisms by which O-GlcNAc promotes survival. We achieved this goal by employing Stable Isotope Labeling of Amino Acids in Cell Culture (SILAC) and a novel "G5-lectibody" immunoprecipitation strategy that combines four O-GlcNAc-specific antibodies (CTD110.6, RL2, HGAC39, and HGAC85) and the lectin WGA. Using the G5-lectibody column in combination with basic reversed phase chromatography and C₁₈ RPLC-MS/MS, 990 proteins were identified and quantified. Hundreds of proteins that were identified demonstrated increased (>250) or decreased (>110) association with the G5-lectibody column upon oxidative stress, of which we validated the O-GlcNAcylation status of 24 proteins. Analysis of proteins with altered glycosylation suggests that stress-induced changes in O-GlcNAcylation cluster into pathways known to regulate the cell's response to injury and include protein folding, transcriptional regulation, epigenetics, and proteins involved in RNA biogenesis. Together, these data suggest that stress-induced O-GlcNAcylation regulates numerous and diverse cellular pathways to promote cell and tissue survival.

Current landscape of protein glycosylation analysis and recent progress toward a novel paradigm of glycoscience research

This review covers the basics and some applications of methodologies for the analysis of glycoprotein glycans. Analytical techniques used for glycoprotein glycans, including liquid chromatography (LC), capillary electrophoresis (CE), mass spectrometry (MS), and high-throughput analytical methods based on microfluidics, were described to supply the essentials about biopharmaceutical and biomarker glycoproteins. We will also describe the MS analysis of glycoproteins and glycopeptides as well as the chemical and enzymatic releasing methods of glycans from glycoproteins and the chemical reactions used for the derivatization of glycans. We hope the techniques have accommodated most of the requests from glycoproteomics researchers.

Identification, Quantification, and Site Localization of Protein Posttranslational Modifications via Mass Spectrometry-Based Proteomics

Posttranslational modifications (PTMs) are important biochemical processes for regulating various signaling pathways and determining specific cell fate. Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics has been developed extensively in the past decade and is becoming the standard approach for systematic characterization of different PTMs on a global scale. In this chapter, we will explain the biological importance of various PTMs, summarize key innovations in PTMs enrichment strategies, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-based fractionation approaches, mass spectrometry detection methods, and lastly bioinformatic tools for PTMs related data analysis. With great effort in recent years by the proteomics community, highly efficient enriching methods and comprehensive resources have been developed. This chapter will specifically focus on five major types of PTMs; phosphorylation, glycosylation, ubiquitination/sumosylation, acetylation, and methylation.

Reversible hydrazide chemistry-based enrichment for O-GlcNAc-modified peptides and glycopeptides having non-reducing GlcNAc residues

O-Linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is an emerging post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins. Analysis of O-GlcNAc modification using mass spectrometry (MS) is often problematic because of the low stoichiometry of the modification. In this study, we developed a new method for enriching O-GlcNAc-modified peptides using reversible hydrazide chemistry. O-GlcNAc-modified peptides were first labeled with N-azidoacetylgalactosamine (GalNAz) using gatactosyltransferase-T1 (Y289L) enzyme. The azide group on the GalNAz residue was then reacted with 3-ethynylbenzaldehyde via copper-catalyzed Huisgen 1,3-cycloaddition "click reaction" to form an aromatic aldehyde group of glycopeptides. Aromatic aldehyde-derivatized glycopeptides were enriched by reversible hydrazone formation with hydrazide resin. Reaction conditions for each step, especially for the click reaction, were optimized to achieve complete reaction without significant side reactions. This method was validated using a tryptic digest of bovine α-crystallin, which is an O-GlcNAc-modified glycoprotein. The developed method was also applied to structure-specific enrichment of N-linked glycopeptides having non-reducing terminal GlcNAc residues. All materials and chemicals required for this method are commercially available and there is no need to prepare any special reagents, facilitating the introduction of this method in any laboratory.

O-GlcNAc profiling: from proteins to proteomes

O-linked β-D-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification (O-GlcNAcylation) onto serine and threonine residues of proteins is an important post-translational modification (PTM), which is involved in many crucial biological processes including transcription, translation, proteasomal degradation, and signal transduction. Aberrant protein O-GlcNAcylation is directly linked to the pathological progression of chronic diseases including diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders. Identification, site mapping, and quantification of O-GlcNAc proteins are a prerequisite to decipher their functions. In this review, we mainly focus on technological developments regarding O-GlcNAc protein profiling. Specifically, on one hand, we show how these techniques are being used for the comprehensive characterization of certain targeted proteins in which biologists are most interested. On the other hand, we present several newly developed approaches for O-GlcNAcomic profiling as well as how they provide us with a systems perspective to crosstalk amongst different PTMs and complicated biological events. Promising technical trends are also highlighted to evoke more efforts by diverse laboratories, which would further expand our understanding of the physiological and pathological roles of protein O-GlcNAcylation in chronic diseases.

Proteome wide purification and identification of O-GlcNAc-modified proteins using click chemistry and mass spectrometry

The post-translational modification of proteins with N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is involved in the regulation of a wide variety of cellular processes and associated with a number of chronic diseases. Despite its emerging biological significance, the systematic identification of O-GlcNAc proteins is still challenging. In the present study, we demonstrate a significantly improved O-GlcNAc protein enrichment procedure, which exploits metabolic labeling of cells by azide-modified GlcNAc and copper-mediated Click chemistry for purification of modified proteins on an alkyne-resin. On-resin proteolysis using trypsin followed by LC-MS/MS afforded the identification of around 1500 O-GlcNAc proteins from a single cell line. Subsequent elution of covalently resin bound O-GlcNAc peptides using selective β-elimination enabled the identification of 185 O-GlcNAc modification sites on 80 proteins. To demonstrate the practical utility of the developed approach, we studied the global effects of the O-GlcNAcase inhibitor GlcNAcstatin G on the level of O-GlcNAc modification of cellular proteins. About 200 proteins including several key players involved in the hexosamine signaling pathway showed significantly increased O-GlcNAcylation levels in response to the drug, which further strengthens the link of O-GlcNAc protein modification to cellular nutrient sensing and response.

Fully automated chip-based nanoelectrospray combined with electron transfer dissociation for high throughput top-down proteomics

The conventional protocol for protein identification by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (MS) is based on enzymatic digestion which renders peptides to be analyzed by liquid chromatography-MS and collision-induced dissociation (CID) multistage MS, in the so-called bottom-up approach. Though this method has brought a significant progress to the field, many limitations, among which, the low throughput and impossibility to characterize in detail posttranslational modifications in terms of site(s) and structure, were reported. Therefore, the research is presently focused on the development of procedures for efficient top-down fragmentation of intact protein ions. In this context, we developed here an approach combining fully automated chip-based-nanoelectrospray ionisation (nanoESI), performed on a NanoMate robot, with electron transfer dissociation (ETD) for peptide and top-down protein sequencing and identification. This advanced analytical platform, integrating robotics, microfluidics technology, ETD and alternate ETD/CID, was tested and found ideally suitable for structural investigation of peptides and modified/functionalized peptides as well as for top-down analysis of medium size proteins by tandem MS experiments of significantly increased throughput and sensitivity. The obtained results indicate that NanoMate-ETD and ETD/CID may represent a viable alternative to the current MS strategies, with potential to develop into a method of routine use for high throughput top-down proteomics.

Discovery of O-GlcNAc-6-phosphate modified proteins in large-scale phosphoproteomics data

Phosphorylated O-GlcNAc is a novel post-translational modification that has so far only been found on the neuronal protein AP180 from the rat (Graham et al., J. Proteome Res. 2011, 10, 2725-2733). Upon collision induced dissociation, the modification generates a highly mass deficient fragment ion (m/z 284.0530) that can be used as a reporter for the identification of phosphorylated O-GlcNAc. Using a publically available mouse brain phosphoproteome data set, we employed our recently developed Oscore software to re-evaluate high resolution/high accuracy tandem mass spectra and discovered the modification on 23 peptides corresponding to 11 mouse proteins. The systematic analysis of 220 candidate phosphoGlcNAc tandem mass spectra as well as a synthetic standard enabled the dissection of the major phosphoGlcNAc fragmentation pathways, suggesting that the modification is O-GlcNAc-6-phosphate. We find that the classical O-GlcNAc modification often exists on the same peptides indicating that O-GlcNAc-6-phosphate may biosynthetically arise in two steps involving the O-GlcNAc transferase and a currently unknown kinase. Many of the identified proteins are involved in synaptic transmission and for Ca(2+)/calmodulin kinase IV, the O-GlcNAc-6-phosphate modification was found in the vicinity of two autophosphorylation sites required for full activation of the kinase suggesting a potential regulatory role for O-GlcNAc-6-phosphate. By re-analyzing mass spectrometric data from human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, our study also identified Zinc finger protein 462 (ZNF462) as the first human O-GlcNAc-6-phosphate modified protein. Collectively, the data suggests that O-GlcNAc-6-phosphate is a general post-translation modification of mammalian proteins with a variety of possible cellular functions.

Discovery of O-GlcNAc-modified proteins in published large-scale proteome data

The attachment of N-acetylglucosamine to serine or threonine residues (O-GlcNAc) is a post-translational modification on nuclear and cytoplasmic proteins with emerging roles in numerous cellular processes, such as signal transduction, transcription, and translation. It is further presumed that O-GlcNAc can exhibit a site-specific, dynamic and possibly functional interplay with phosphorylation. O-GlcNAc proteins are commonly identified by tandem mass spectrometry following some form of biochemical enrichment. In the present study, we assessed if, and to which extent, O-GlcNAc-modified proteins can be discovered from existing large-scale proteome data sets. To this end, we conceived a straightforward O-GlcNAc identification strategy based on our recently developed Oscore software that automatically analyzes tandem mass spectra for the presence and intensity of O-GlcNAc diagnostic fragment ions. Using the Oscore, we discovered hundreds of O-GlcNAc peptides not initially identified in these studies, and most of which have not been described before. Merely re-searching this data extended the number of known O-GlcNAc proteins by almost 100 suggesting that this modification exists even more widely than previously anticipated and the modification is often sufficiently abundant to be detected without enrichment. However, a comparison of O-GlcNAc and phospho-identifications from the very same data indicates that the O-GlcNAc modification is considerably less abundant than phosphorylation. The discovery of numerous doubly modified peptides (i.e. peptides with one or multiple O-GlcNAc or phosphate moieties), suggests that O-GlcNAc and phosphorylation are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but can occur simultaneously at adjacent sites.

Increasing the productivity of glycopeptides analysis by using higher-energy collision dissociation-accurate mass-product-dependent electron transfer dissociation

Currently, glycans are attracting attention from the scientific community as potential biomarkers or as posttranslational modifications (PTMs) of therapeutic proteins. However, structural characterization of glycoproteins and glycopeptides remains analytically challenging. Here, we report on the implementation of a novel acquisition strategy termed higher-energy collision dissociation-accurate mass-product-dependent electron transfer dissociation (HCD-PD-ETD) on a hybrid linear ion trap-orbitrap mass spectrometer. This acquisition strategy uses the complementary fragmentations of ETD and HCD for glycopeptides analysis in an intelligent fashion. Furthermore, the approach minimizes user input for optimizing instrumental parameters and enables straightforward detection of glycopeptides. ETD spectra are only acquired when glycan oxonium ions from MS/MS HCD are detected. The advantage of this approach is that it streamlines data analysis and improves dynamic range and duty cycle. Here, we present the benefits of HCD-PD-ETD relative to the traditional alternating HCD/ETD for a trainer set containing twelve-protein mixture with two glycoproteins: human serotransferrin, ovalbumin and contaminations of two other: bovine alpha 1 acid glycoprotein (bAGP) and bovine fetuin.