Binding Affinities Studies of Nitrated Model Peptides to Monoclonal Anti-3-nitrotyrosine Antibody

Abstract

Tyrosine nitration has been shown to be an important oxidative protein modification and play a crucial role in pathophysiological conditions, associated with oxidative stress, such as atherosclerosis and neurodegenerative disease. For a better understanding of nitration mechanism, the identification and the quantification of nitration sites represents an important research goal. Due to (i) the low levels of nitration in native proteins, (ii) structural changes induced by nitration and (iii) the specificity of anti � 3 nitro tyrosine antibodies the method which may provide the identification of nitration sites in proteins represent a challenging experimental task. In this work we have used synthetic nitrated tyrosine containing peptides to determine antibody-binding affinities and specificity of different tyrosine residue (Tyr33, Tyr98, Tyr107and Tyr122) in Eosinophil cationic proteins (ECP). The highest affinity of nitrated ECP peptides to the monoclonal antibody (anti-3NT) was obtained for the only in vivo nitrated identified residue Tyr33(0.082 �M); in contrast, all other three nitrated residues at Tyr98, Tyr107 and Tyr122) showed significant lower affinity being imbedded in the ECP protein structure as similar resulted by molecular computational modeling.