Dataset Information

Data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry for site-specific glycoproteomics characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

ABSTRACT: The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the global pandemic of COVID-19, is an abundant, heavily glycosylated surface protein that plays a key role in receptor binding and host cell fusion, and is the focus of all current vaccine development efforts. Variants of concern are now circulating worldwide that exhibit mutations in the spike protein. Protein sequence and glycosylation variations of the spike may affect viral fitness, antigenicity, and immune evasion. Global surveillance of the virus currently involves genome sequencing, but tracking emerging variants should include quantitative measurement of changes in site-specific glycosylation as well. In this work, we used data-dependent acquisition (DDA) and data-independent acquisition (DIA) mass spectrometry to quantitatively characterize the five N-linked glycosylation sites of the glycoprotein standard alpha-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP), as well as the 22 sites of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. We found that DIA compared favorably to DDA in sensitivity, resulting in more assignments of low abundance glycopeptides. However, the reproducibility across replicates of DIA-identified glycopeptides was lower than that of DDA, possibly due to the difficulty of reliably assigning low abundance glycopeptides confidently. The differences in the data acquired between the two methods suggest that DIA out-performs DDA in terms of glycoprotein coverage but that overall performance is a balance of sensitivity, selectivity, and statistical confidence in glycoproteomics. We assert that these analytical and bioinformatics methods for assigning and quantifying glycoforms would benefit the process of tracking viral variants as well as for vaccine development.

INSTRUMENT(S): Q Exactive HF

ORGANISM(S): Homo Sapiens (human)

SUBMITTER: Deborah Chang

LAB HEAD: Joseph Zaia

PROVIDER: PXD027425 | Pride | 2022-02-12

REPOSITORIES: Pride

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Data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry for site-specific glycoproteomics characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

Chang Deborah D Klein Joshua A JA Nalehua Mary Rachel MR Hackett William E WE Zaia Joseph J

Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry 20211012 29

The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the global pandemic of COVID-19, is an abundant, heavily glycosylated surface protein that plays a key role in receptor binding and host cell fusion, and is the focus of all current vaccine development efforts. Variants of concern are now circulating worldwide that exhibit mutations in the spike protein. Protein sequence and glycosylation variations of the spike may affect viral fitness, antigenicity, and immune evasion. Global surveilla ...[more]

PMID: 34635934

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Project description:Influenza A virus (IAV) mutates rapidly, preventing a single seasonal vaccine from targeting more than one strain, and year-to-year vaccine effectiveness is low. One challenge in designing effective vaccines is that genetic mutations frequently cause amino acid variations in IAV envelope protein hemagglutinin (HA) that create new N-glycosylation sequons; resulting N-glycans cause antigenic shielding, allowing viral escape from adaptive immune responses. Vaccine candidate strain selection currently involves correlating antigenicity with HA protein sequence among circulating strains, but quantitative comparison of site-specific glycosylation information is likely to improve the ability to design vaccines with broader effectiveness against evolved strains. However, there is poor understanding of the influence of glycosylation on immunodominance, antigenicity, and immunogenicity of HA, and there are no well-tested methods for comparing glycosylation similarity among virus samples. Here, we present a method for statistically rigorous quantification of similarity between two related virus strains that considers the presence and abundance of glycopeptide glycoforms. We demonstrate the strength of our approach by determining that there was a quantifiable difference in glycosylation at the protein level between wild-type IAV HA from A/Switzerland/9715293/2013 (SWZ13) and a mutant strain of SWZ13, even though no N-glycosylation sequons were changed. We determined site-specifically that WT and mutant HA have varying similarity at the glycosylation sites of the head domain, reflecting competing pressures to evade host immune response while retaining viral fitness. To our knowledge, our results are the first to quantify changes in glycosylation state that occur in related proteins of considerable glycan heterogeneity. Our results provide a method for understanding how changes in glycosylation state are correlated with variations in protein sequence, which is necessary for improving IAV vaccine strain selection. Understanding glycosylation will be especially important as we find new expression vectors for vaccine production, as glycosylation state depends greatly on the host species.

Project description:The amino acid sequences of immunodominant domains of hemagglutinin (HA) on the surface of influenza A virus (IAV) evolve rapidly, producing viral variants. HA mediates receptor recognition, binding and cell entry, and serves as the target for IAV vaccines. Glycosylation, a post-translational modification that places large, branched polysaccharide molecules on proteins, can modulate the function of HA, and can shield antigenic regions allowing for viral evasion from immune responses. Our previous work showed that subtle changes in the HA protein sequence can have a measurable change in glycosylation. Thus, being able to measure quantitatively how glycosylation changes in viral variants is critical for understanding how HA function may change throughout viral evolution. Moreover, understanding quantitatively how the choice of viral expression systems affects glycosylation can help in the process of vaccine design and manufacture. Although IAV vaccines are most commonly expressed in chicken eggs, cell-based vaccines have many advantages and the adoption of more cell-based vaccines would be an important step in mitigating seasonal influenza and protecting against future pandemics. Here, we have investigated the use of data-independent acquisition (DIA) mass spectrometry for quantitative glycoproteomics. We found that DIA improved the sensitivity of glycopeptide detection for four variants of A/Switzerland/9715293/2013 IAV: WT and mutant, each expressed in chicken eggs and MDCK cells. We used the Tanimoto similarity metric to quantify changes in glycosylation between WT and mutant, and between egg-expressed and cell-expressed virus. Our DIA site-specific glycosylation similarity comparison of WT and mutant expressed in eggs confirmed our previous analysis while achieving greater depth of coverage. We found that sequence changes resulting from different viral expression systems affected distinct glycosylation sites of HA. Our methods can be applied to track glycosylation changes in circulating IAV variants to bolster the genomic surveillance already being done, for a more complete understanding of IAV evolution.

Project description:The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus utilizes an extensively glycosylated spike protein that protrudes from the viral envelope to bind to angiotensin-converting enzyme-related carboxypeptidase (ACE2) as its primary receptor to mediate host-cell entry. Currently, the predominant recombinant spike protein production hosts are Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) and human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells. In this study, recombinant full-size spike protein was produced transiently in CHO and HEK cell suspensions. To further evaluate the sialic acid linkages presenting on spike glycans, a two-step amidation process, employing dimethylamine and ammonium hydroxide reactions in a solid support system, was developed to differentially modify the sialic acid linkages on glycans and glycopeptides from spike protein. We determined global and site-specific N-linked glycosylation patterns in soluble SARS-CoV-2 spike using MALDI-TOF and LC-MS/MS with electron-transfer/higher-energy collision dissociation (EThcD) fragmentation. We identified the glycan compositions at 21 and 19 out of the 22 predicted N-glycosylation sites of the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins produced in CHO and HEK, respectively. The N-glycan site at 1158 position (N1158) and the N-glycan sites at 122 ,282 and 1158 positions (N122, N282 and N1158) were found to be unoccupied on spike secreted from CHO and HEK cells, respectively. The structural mapping of glycans of recombinant human spike proteins revealed that CHO-Spike presented more complex and higher sialylation (α2,3-linked) content while HEK-Spike displayed more high-mannose and minor content of α2,3- and α2,6-linked sialic acids. The N74 site represents the most heavily N-glycosylated site on both spike proteins while some high-mannose abundant sites (N17, N234, N343, N616, N709, N717, N801 and N1134) on HEK-Spike may differentially shield the virus compared to CHO-spike and provide a different host immune system interaction strategy. Collectively, these data underscore the importance of characterizing site-specific glycosylation on recombinant human spike protein from HEK and CHO cells in order to better understand the impact of the production host on this complex and important protein used in diagnostics and vaccines.

Dataset Information

Data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry for site-specific glycoproteomics characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

Publications

Data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry for site-specific glycoproteomics characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

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