应用非变性质谱-行波式离子淌度谱表征完整糖蛋白复合物的稳定性及小规模结构差异

Characterization of Stability and Small-scale Structural Differences of Intact Glycoprotein Complexes Using Native Mass Spectrometry-Travelling-Wave Ion Mobility Spectrometry

  • 摘要: 在完整复合物层面表征糖蛋白复合物的高级结构和动态学,对于研究蛋白质功能具有重要意义。行波式离子淌度与非变性质谱结合不仅可提供额外的正交分离维度,还可通过测定碰撞截面积(CCS)获取分析物的几何特征信息,助力结构表征。本工作针对糖蛋白复合物稳定性及小规模结构差异的表征需求,选取由不同物种表达的亲和素作为糖蛋白模式复合物,探究离子淌度在非变性质谱分析中可提供的结构信息。结果表明,离子淌度可在完整复合物水平上分离蛋白型亚群分布,能够反映高阶复合物的几何特征,以及蛋白在气相解离条件、电荷调控条件和经电荷调控的气相解离条件下的构象变化程度,可应用于糖蛋白复合物体系的稳定性评价。

     

    Abstract: Glycosylation is one of the most common types of post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins, which affects protein properties including conformation, stability and solubility, and plays essential roles in functions including molecular recognition, signaling and immune defense. Characterizing the higherorder structures and dynamics of glycoprotein complexes at the intact level is essential for studying the biological functions of glycoproteins. Particularly, accessing structural information such as glycosylation pattern, proteoform distribution, protein interaction, and dynamic conformational evolvement requires direct measurement of intact species. Native mass spectrometry (nMS) allows preservation of noncovalent interprotein interactions and direct analysis of topology, stoichiometry and dynamic assembly/disassembly at the intact complex level, highly complementing the conventional biophysical techniques. The combination of nMS with travellingwave ion mobility spectrometry (TWIMS) provides not only an additional orthogonal dimension of separation, but also geometric features of the analytes through collisional cross-section (CCS) determination, thereby facilitating the structural characterization. The macro- and micro-heterogeneity caused by glycosylation, as well as binding with small molecules, induce structural changes of glycoproteins and their complexes on a scale smaller than those resulting from unfolding or macromolecular association/dissociation. However, the benefits of nMSIMS for characterization of smallscale structural changes or differences of glycoprotein complexes remain to be further demonstrated, in aspects including proteoformspecific structural analysis, distinguishing different binding states of glycoprotein complexes in complex with small molecules, and solutionparameterinduced conformational or stability changes. In this work, aiming at characterizing the stability and smallscale structural differences of glycoprotein complexes, two formats of avidin (tetrameric biotin-binding glycoprotein) that were expressed from different species and exhibit differing carbohydrate contents and proteoform patterns were used as model systems, and the benefits of implementing ion mobility analysis in nMS for structural analysis of both intact complexes and subunits released in the gasphase were evaluated. It was demonstrated that IMS allows separation of subpopulations of proteoforms, which facilitates not only profiling of proteoform distribution for intact glycoproteins by MS, but also investigation of correlation between glycosylation and CCS. We also demonstrated the power of IMS in measuring the geometric features of the protein complexes in complex with small molecules, and characterizing the extent of conformational changes of glycoproteins under conditions including gasphase dissociation, supercharging, chargereduction, and chargemanipulated dissociation. These advantages enable the stability evaluation for glycoprotein complexes.

     

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