Improve Digestion Efficiency Research Articles

Efficient and Specific Trypsin Digestion of Microgram to Nanogram Quantities of Proteins in Organic−Aqueous Solvent Systems

Mass spectrometry-based identification of the components of multiprotein complexes often involves solution-phase proteolytic digestion of the complex. The affinity purification of individual protein complexes often yields nanogram to low-microgram amounts of protein, which poses several challenges for enzymatic digestion and protein identification. We tested different solvent systems to optimize trypsin digestions of samples containing limited amounts of protein for subsequent analysis by LC-MS-MS. Data collected from digestion of 10-, 2-, 1-, and 0.2-microg portions of a protein standard mixture indicated that an organic-aqueous solvent system containing 80% acetonitrile consistently provided the most complete digestion, producing more peptide identifications than the other solvent systems tested. For example, a 1-h digestion in 80% acetonitrile yielded over 52% more peptides than the overnight digestion of 1 microg of a protein mixture in purely aqueous buffer. This trend was also observed for peptides from digested ribosomal proteins isolated from Rhodopseudomonas palustris. In addition to improved digestion efficiency, the shorter digestion times possible with the organic solvent also improved trypsin specificity, resulting in smaller numbers of semitryptic peptides than an overnight digestion protocol using an aqueous solvent. The technique was also demonstrated for an affinity-isolated protein complex, GroEL. To our knowledge, this report is the first using mass spectrometry data to show a linkage between digestion solvent and trypsin specificity.

Chemically Modified, Immobilized Trypsin Reactor with Improved Digestion Efficiency

Tryptic digestion followed by identification using mass spectrometry is an important step in many proteomic studies. Here, we describe the preparation of immobilized, acetylated trypsin for enhanced digestion efficacy in integrated protein analysis platforms. Complete digestion of cytochrome c was obtained with two types of modified-trypsin beads with a contact time of only 4 s, while corresponding unmodified-trypsin beads gave only incomplete digestion. The digestion rate of myoglobin, a protein known to be rather resistant to proteolysis, was not altered by acetylating trypsin and required a buffer containing 35% acetonitrile to obtain complete digestion. The use of acetylated-trypsin beads led to fewer interfering tryptic autolysis products, indicating an increased stability of this modified enzyme. Importantly, the modification did not affect trypsin's substrate specificity, as the peptide map of myoglobin was not altered upon acetylation of immobilized trypsin. Kinetic digestion experiments in solution with low-molecular-weight substrates and cytochrome c confirmed the increased catalytic efficiency (lower K(M) and higher k(cat)) and increased resistance to autolysis of trypsin upon acetylation. Enhancement of catalytic efficiency was correlated with the number of acetylations per molecule. The favorable properties of the new chemically modified trypsin reactor should make it a valuable tool in automated protein analysis systems.