Project description:More than half of the protein-coding genes in bacteria are organized in polycistronic operons composed of two or more genes. Whether the operon organization maintains the stoichiometric expression of the genes within an operon remain under debate. In this study, we performed a label-free data-independent acquisition hyper reaction monitoring mass-spectrometry (HRM-MS) experiment to quantify the Escherichia coli proteome in exponential phase and quantified 93.6% of the cytosolic proteins, covering 67.9% and 56.0% of the translating polycistronic operons in BW25113 and MG1655 strains, respectively. We found the shorter operons tend to be more tightly controlled for stoichiometry than longer operons, and those operons for metabolic pathways are less controlled for stoichiometry compared with operons for protein complexes, illustrating the multifaceted nature of the operon-wise regulation: the operon-wise unified transcriptional level and gene-specific translational level. This multi-level regulation benefits the host by optimizing the efficiency of the productivity of metabolic pathways and maintenance of different types of protein complexes.
Project description:LC-MS/MS-based identification of HLA-peptides is poised to provide a deep understanding of the rules underlying antigen presentation. However, a key obstacle limiting the utility of MS data is the ambiguity arising from the co-expression of multiple HLA alleles. Here, we introduce a strategy for profiling the HLA ligandome one allele at a time. By using cell lines expressing a single HLA allele, optimizing immunopurifications, and developing a novel spectral search algorithm, we identified thousands of peptides bound to 16 different HLA class I alleles. These data enabled the discovery of novel binding motifs, and an integrative analysis quantifying the contribution of factors critical to epitope presentation, such as protein cleavage and gene expression. We trained neural network prediction algorithms with our large dataset (>24,000 peptides) and outperformed algorithms trained on datasets of peptides with measured affinities. We thus demonstrate a scalable strategy for systematically learning the rules of endogenous antigen presentation.
Project description:The locations of transcriptional enhancers and promoters were recently mapped in many mammalian cell types. Proteins that bind those regulatory regions can determine cell identity but have not been systematically identified. Here we purify native enhancers, promoters or heterochromatin from embryonic stem cells by chromatin immunoprecipitations (ChIP) for characteristic histone modifications and identify associated proteins using mass spectrometry (MS). 239 factors are identified and predicted to bind enhancers or promoters with different levels of activity, or heterochromatin. Published genome-wide data indicate a high accuracy of location prediction by ChIP-MS. A quarter of the identified factors are important for pluripotency and includes Oct4, Esrrb, Klf5, Mycn and Dppa2, factors that drive reprogramming to pluripotent stem cells. We determined the genome-wide binding sites of Dppa2 and find that Dppa2 operates outside the classical pluripotency network. Our ChIP-MS method provides a detailed read-out of the transcriptional landscape representative of the investigated cell type.
Project description:Retinoblastoma (RB) is an intraocular childhood tumor which, if left untreated, leads to blindness and mortality. Nucleolin (NCL) protein which is differentially expressed on the tumor cell surface, binds ligands and regulates carcinogenesis and angiogenesis. We found that NCL is over expressed in RB tumor tissues and cell lines compared to normal retina. We studied the effect of nucleolin-aptamer (NCL-APT) to reduce proliferation in RB tumor cells. Aptamer treatment on the RB cell lines (Y79 and WERI-Rb1) led to significant inhibition of cell proliferation. Locked nucleic acid (LNA) modified NCL-APT administered subcutaneously (s.c.) near tumor or intraperitoneally (i.p.) in Y79 xenografted nude mice resulted in 26 and 65% of tumor growth inhibition, respectively. Downregulation of inhibitor of apoptosis proteins, tumor miRNA-18a, altered serum cytokines, and serum miRNA-18a levels were observed upon NCL-APT treatment. Desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI MS)-based imaging of cell lines and tumor tissues revealed changes in phosphatidylcholines levels upon treatment. Thus, our study provides proof of concept illustrating NCL-APT-based targeted therapeutic strategy and use of DESI MS-based lipid imaging in monitoring therapeutic responses in RB.
Project description:We present a combinatorial approach, integrating experimental data from small protein-optimized mass spectrometry (MS) and ribosome profiling (Ribo-seq), to generate a high confidence inventory of small proteins in the model archaeon Haloferax volcanii.
Project description:Probe electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (PESI-MS) is an ambient ionization-based mass spectrometry method that surpasses the original electrospray ionization technique in features such as the rapidity of analysis, simplicity of the equipment and procedure, and lower cost. This study found that the PESI-MS system with machine learning has the potential to establish a lipid-based diagnosis of breast cancer with higher accuracy, using a simpler approach. Rapid mass spectrometry for breast cancer.
Project description:Methanococcus maripaludis is a methanogenic archaeon. Within its genome, there are two operons for membrane associated hydrogenases, eha and ehb. To investigate the regulation of ehb on the cell, an S40 mutant was constructed in such a way that a portion of the ehb operon was replaced by pac cassette in the wild type parental strain S2 (done by Whitman's group at the University of Georgia). The S40 and S2 strains were grown in 14N and 15N media with acetate separately. A biological replicate was made by switching the media. Mass spectrometry based quantitative proteomics were done on the mixtures to investigate the differences in expression patterns between S40 and S2. Keywords: isotope labeling mass spectrometry, quantitative proteomics
Project description:Lipid composition in cell membrane is closely associated with cell characteristics. Here, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization- Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry was employed to in situ determine membrane components of human mammary epithelial cells (MCF-10 A) and six different breast cancer cell lines (i.e., BT-20, MCF-7, SK-BR-3, MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-157, and MDA-MB-361) without any lipid extraction and separation. Partial least-square discriminant analysis indicated that changes in the levels of these membrane lipids were closely correlated with the types of breast cell lines. Elevated levels of polyunsaturated lipids in MCF-10 A cells relative to six breast cancer cells and in BT-20 cells relative to other breast cancer cell lines were detected. The Western blotting assays indicated that the expression of five lipogenesis-related enzymes (i.e., fatty acid synthase 1(FASN1), stearoyl-CoA desaturase 1 (SCD1), stearoyl-CoA desaturase 5 (SCD5), choline kinase α (CKα), and sphingomyelin synthase 1) was associated with the types of the breast cells, and that the SCD1 level in MCF-7 cells was significantly increased relative to other breast cell lines. Our findings suggest that elevated expression levels of FASN1, SCD1, SCD5, and CKα may closely correlated with enhanced levels of saturated and monounsaturated lipids in breast cancer cell lines.
Project description:Thalidomide and its derivatives lenalidomide and pomalidomide (IMiDs) are effective treatments of hematologic malignancies. It was shown that IMiDs impart gain of function properties to the CUL4-RBX1-DDB1-CRBN (CRL4CRBN) ubiquitin ligase that enable binding, ubiquitination and degradation of key therapeutic targets such as IKFZ1, IKZF3 and CSNK1A1. While these substrates have been implicated as efficacy targets in multiple myeloma (MM) and 5q deletion associated myelodysplastic syndrome (del(5q)-MDS), other targets likely exist. Using a pulse-chase SILAC mass spectrometry-based proteomics approach, we demonstrate that lenalidomide induces the ubiquitination and degradation of ZFP91. We establish that ZFP91 is a bona fide IMiD dependent CRL4CRBN substrate and further show that ZFP91 harbors a zinc finger (ZnF) motif, related to the IKZF1/3 ZnF, critical for IMiD dependent CRBN binding. These findings demonstrate that single time point pulse-chase SILAC mass spectrometry-based proteomics (pSILAC-MS) is a sensitive approach for target identification of small molecules inducing selective protein degradation.