Low-energy collision-induced dissociation fragmentation analysis of cysteinyl-modified peptides

The development of methods to chemically modify and isolate cysteinyl-residue-containing peptides (Cys-peptides) for LC-MS/MS analysis has generated considerable interest in the field of proteomics. Methods using isotope-coded affinity tags (ICAT) and (+)-biotinyl-iodoacetamidyl-3,6-dioxaoctanediamine (iodoacetyl-PEO-biotin) employ similar Cys-modifying reagents that contain a thiolate-specific biotin group to modify and isolate Cys-containing peptides in conjunction with immobilized avidin. For these strategies to be effective on a proteome-wide level, the presence of the ICAT or acetyl-PEO-biotin tag should not interfere with the efficiency of induced dissociation in MS/MS experiments or with the identification of the modified Cys-peptides by automated database searching algorithms. We have compared the collision-induced dissociation (CID) fragmentation patterns of peptides labeled with iodoacetyl-PEO-biotin and the ICAT reagent to those of the unmodified peptides. CID of Cys-peptides modified with either reagent resulted in the formation of ions attributed to the modified Cys-peptides as well as those unique to the labeling reagent. As demonstrated by analyzing acetyl-PEO-biotin labeled peptides from ribonuclease A and the ICAT-labeled proteome of Deinococcus radiodurans, the presence of these label-specific product ions provides a useful identifier to discern whether a peptide has been modified with the Cys-specific reagent, especially when a number of peptides analyzed using these methods do not contain a modified Cys residue, and to differentiate identical Cys-peptides labeled with either ICAT-d₀ or ICAT-d₈.