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  • Limited proteolysis via millisecond digestions in protease-modified membranes.

Limited proteolysis via millisecond digestions in protease-modified membranes.

Analytical chemistry (2012-09-07)
Yu-Jing Tan, Wei-Han Wang, Yi Zheng, Jinlan Dong, Giovanni Stefano, Federica Brandizzi, R Michael Garavito, Gavin E Reid, Merlin L Bruening
ABSTRACT

Sequential adsorption of poly(styrene sulfonate) (PSS) and proteases in porous nylon yields enzymatic membrane reactors for limited protein digestion. Although a high local enzyme density (~30 mg/cm(3)) and small pore diameters in the membrane lead to digestion in <1 s, the low membrane thickness (170 μm) affords control over residence times at the millisecond level to limit digestion. Apomyoglobin digestion demonstrates that peptide lengths increase as the residence time in the membrane decreases. Moreover, electron transfer dissociation (ETD) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) on a large myoglobin proteolytic peptide (8 kDa) provides a resolution of 1-2 amino acids. Under denaturing conditions, limited membrane digestion of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and subsequent ESI-Orbitrap MS analysis reveal large peptides (3-10 kDa) that increase the sequence coverage from 53% (2 s digestion) to 82% (0.05 s digestion). With this approach, we also performed membrane-based limited proteolysis of a large Arabidopsis GTPase, Root Hair Defective 3 (RHD3) and showed suitable probing for labile regions near the C-terminus to suggest what protein reconstruction might make RHD3 more suitable for crystallization.

MATERIALS
Product Number
Brand
Product Description

Sigma-Aldrich
Poly(4-styrenesulfonic acid) solution, Mw ~75,000, 18 wt. % in H2O
Sigma-Aldrich
Poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) solution, average Mw ~200,000, 30 wt. % in H2O
Sigma-Aldrich
Poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate), average Mw ~70,000
Sigma-Aldrich
Poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate), average Mw ~1,000,000, powder
Sigma-Aldrich
Poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) solution, average Mw ~70,000, 30 wt. % in H2O
Sigma-Aldrich
Poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) solution, average Mw ~1,000,000, 25 wt. % in H2O