Phosphorus-Based Absolutely Quantified Standard Peptides for Quantitative Proteomics

Abstract

An innovative method for the production of absolutely quantified peptide standards is described. These are named phosphorus-based absolutely quantified standard (PASTA) peptides. As the first step, synthetic phosphopeptides are calibrated via a hybrid LC-(ICP+ESI)-MS system. Quantification is achieved by ICP-MS detection of 31P, and identification is performed by ESI-MS. Generation of phosphopeptide standard solutions with this system is demonstrated to provide absolute concentrations with an accuracy better than 10%. The concept was extended to the production of peptide standards by subjecting a PASTA phosphopeptide to gentle and complete dephosphorylation to obtain the cognate PASTA peptide. It is demonstrated that both enzymatic hydrolysis by alkaline or antarctic phosphatase or chemical hydrolysis by hydrofluoric acid can be employed for this purpose. Further, the introduction of one or more stable isotope-labeled amino acids (preferably labeled by 13C, 15N) results in the production of a labeled PASTA peptide, which then can be employed as an internal standard for quantitative analysis by LC-ESI-MS. Using a 1:1 mixture of a stable isotope-labeled PASTA peptide/phosphopeptide pair as dual standard, a quantification between active and inactive recombinant MAP kinase p38alpha was performed by a combination of tryptic digestion and nanoLC-MS.