Protein-Centric Analysis of Personalized Antibody Repertoires Using LC-MS-Based Fab-Profiling on a timsTOF.

Endogenous antibodies, or immunoglobulins (Igs), abundantly present in body fluids, represent some of the most challenging samples to analyze, largely due to the immense variability in their sequences and concentrations. It has been estimated that our body can produce billions of different Ig proteins with different isotypes, making their individual analysis seemingly impossible. However, recent advances in protein-centric proteomics using LC-MS coupled to Orbitrap mass analyzers to profile intact Fab fragments formed by selective cleavage at the IgG-hinge revealed that IgG repertoires may be less diverse, albeit unique for each donor. Serum repertoires seem to be dominated by a few hundred clones that cumulatively make up 50-95% of the total IgG content. Enabling such analyses required careful optimization of the chromatography and mass analysis, as all Fab analytes are highly alike in mass (46-51 kDa) and sequence. To extend the opportunities of this mass-spectrometry-based profiling of antibody repertoires, we here report the optimization and evaluation of an alternative MS platform, namely, the timsTOF, for antibody repertoire profiling. The timsTOF mass analyzer has gained traction in recent years for peptide-centric proteomics and found wide applicability in plasma proteomics, affinity proteomics, and HLA peptidomics, to name a few. However, for protein-centric analysis, this platform has been less explored. Here, we demonstrate that the timsTOF platform can be adapted to perform protein-centric LC-MS-based profiling of antibody repertoires. In a side-by-side comparison of the timsTOF and the Orbitrap we demonstrate that the extracted serum antibody repertoires are alike qualitatively and quantitatively, whereby in particular the sensitivity of the timsTOF platform excels. Future incorporation of advanced top-down capabilities on the timsTOF may make this platform a very valuable alternative for protein-centric proteomics and top-down proteomics and thus also for personalized antibody repertoire profiling.

Oxonium Ion-Guided Optimization of Ion Mobility-Assisted Glycoproteomics on the timsTOF Pro.

Spatial separation of ions in the gas phase, providing information about their size as collisional cross-sections, can readily be achieved through ion mobility. The timsTOF Pro (Bruker Daltonics) series combines a trapped ion mobility device with a quadrupole, collision cell, and a time-of-flight analyzer to enable the analysis of ions at great speed. Here, we show that the timsTOF Pro is capable of physically separating N-glycopeptides from nonmodified peptides and producing high-quality fragmentation spectra, both beneficial for glycoproteomics analyses of complex samples. The glycan moieties enlarge the size of glycopeptides compared with nonmodified peptides, yielding a clear cluster in the mobilogram that, next to increased dynamic range from the physical separation of glycopeptides and nonmodified peptides, can be used to make an effective selection filter for directing the mass spectrometer to analytes of interest. We designed an approach where we (1) focused on a region of interest in the ion mobilogram and (2) applied stepped collision energies to obtain informative glycopeptide tandem mass spectra on the timsTOF Pro:glyco-polygon-stepped collision energy-parallel accumulation serial fragmentation. This method was applied to selected glycoproteins, human plasma- and neutrophil-derived glycopeptides. We show that the achieved physical separation in the region of interest allows for improved extraction of information from the samples, even at shorter liquid chromatography gradients of 15 min. We validated our approach on human neutrophil and plasma samples of known makeup, in which we captured the anticipated glycan heterogeneity (paucimannose, phosphomannose, high mannose, hybrid and complex glycans) from plasma and neutrophil samples at the expected abundances. As the method is compatible with off-the-shelve data acquisition routines and data analysis software, it can readily be applied by any laboratory with a timsTOF Pro and is reproducible as demonstrated by a comparison between two laboratories.

Synchro-PASEF Allows Precursor-Specific Fragment Ion Extraction and Interference Removal in Data-Independent Acquisition.

Data-independent acquisition (DIA) methods have become increasingly popular in mass spectrometry-based proteomics because they enable continuous acquisition of fragment spectra for all precursors simultaneously. However, these advantages come with the challenge of correctly reconstructing the precursor-fragment relationships in these highly convoluted spectra for reliable identification and quantification. Here, we introduce a scan mode for the combination of trapped ion mobility spectrometry with parallel accumulation-serial fragmentation (PASEF) that seamlessly and continuously follows the natural shape of the ion cloud in ion mobility and peptide precursor mass dimensions. Termed synchro-PASEF, it increases the detected fragment ion current several-fold at sub-second cycle times. Consecutive quadrupole selection windows move synchronously through the mass and ion mobility range. In this process, the quadrupole slices through the peptide precursors, which separates fragment ion signals of each precursor into adjacent synchro-PASEF scans. This precisely defines precursor-fragment relationships in ion mobility and mass dimensions and effectively deconvolutes the DIA fragment space. Importantly, the partitioned parts of the fragment ion transitions provide a further dimension of specificity via a lock-and-key mechanism. This is also advantageous for quantification, where signals from interfering precursors in the DIA selection window do not affect all partitions of the fragment ion, allowing to retain only the specific parts for quantification. Overall, we establish the defining features of synchro-PASEF and explore its potential for proteomic analyses.

Ultra-high sensitivity mass spectrometry quantifies single-cell proteome changes upon perturbation.

Single-cell technologies are revolutionizing biology but are today mainly limited to imaging and deep sequencing. However, proteins are the main drivers of cellular function and in-depth characterization of individual cells by mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics would thus be highly valuable and complementary. Here, we develop a robust workflow combining miniaturized sample preparation, very low flow-rate chromatography, and a novel trapped ion mobility mass spectrometer, resulting in a more than 10-fold improved sensitivity. We precisely and robustly quantify proteomes and their changes in single, FACS-isolated cells. Arresting cells at defined stages of the cell cycle by drug treatment retrieves expected key regulators. Furthermore, it highlights potential novel ones and allows cell phase prediction. Comparing the variability in more than 430 single-cell proteomes to transcriptome data revealed a stable-core proteome despite perturbation, while the transcriptome appears stochastic. Our technology can readily be applied to ultra-high sensitivity analyses of tissue material, posttranslational modifications, and small molecule studies from small cell counts to gain unprecedented insights into cellular heterogeneity in health and disease.

diaPASEF: parallel accumulation-serial fragmentation combined with data-independent acquisition.

Data-independent acquisition modes isolate and concurrently fragment populations of different precursors by cycling through segments of a predefined precursor m/z range. Although these selection windows collectively cover the entire m/z range, overall, only a few per cent of all incoming ions are isolated for mass analysis. Here, we make use of the correlation of molecular weight and ion mobility in a trapped ion mobility device (timsTOF Pro) to devise a scan mode that samples up to 100% of the peptide precursor ion current in m/z and mobility windows. We extend an established targeted data extraction workflow by inclusion of the ion mobility dimension for both signal extraction and scoring and thereby increase the specificity for precursor identification. Data acquired from whole proteome digests and mixed organism samples demonstrate deep proteome coverage and a high degree of reproducibility as well as quantitative accuracy, even from 10 ng sample amounts.

Benefits of Collisional Cross Section Assisted Precursor Selection (caps-PASEF) for Cross-linking Mass Spectrometry.

Ion mobility separates molecules in the gas-phase based on their physico-chemical properties, providing information about their size as collisional cross-sections. The timsTOF Pro combines trapped ion mobility with a quadrupole, collision cell and a TOF mass analyzer, to probe ions at high speeds with on-the-fly fragmentation. Here, we show that on this platform ion mobility is beneficial for cross-linking MS (XL-MS). Cross-linking reagents covalently link amino acids in proximity, resulting in peptide pairs after proteolytic digestion. These cross-linked peptides are typically present at low abundance in the background of normal peptides, which can partially be resolved by using enrichable cross-linking reagents. Even with a very efficient enrichable cross-linking reagent, like PhoX, the analysis of cross-linked peptides is still hampered by the co-enrichment of peptides connected to a partially hydrolyzed reagent - termed mono-linked peptides. For experiments aiming to uncover protein-protein interactions these are unwanted byproducts. Here, we demonstrate that gas-phase separation by ion mobility enables the separation of mono-linked peptides from cross-linked peptide pairs. A clear partition between these two classes is observed at a CCS of 500 Å2 and a monoisotopic mass of 2 kDa, which can be used for targeted precursor selection. A total of 50-70% of the mono-linked peptides are prevented from sequencing, allowing the analysis to focus on sequencing the relevant cross-linked peptide pairs. In applications to both simple proteins and protein mixtures and a complete highly complex lysate this approach provides a substantial increase in detected cross-linked peptides.

MaxQuant Software for Ion Mobility Enhanced Shotgun Proteomics.

Ion mobility can add a dimension to LC-MS based shotgun proteomics which has the potential to boost proteome coverage, quantification accuracy and dynamic range. Required for this is suitable software that extracts the information contained in the four-dimensional (4D) data space spanned by m/z, retention time, ion mobility and signal intensity. Here we describe the ion mobility enhanced MaxQuant software, which utilizes the added data dimension. It offers an end to end computational workflow for the identification and quantification of peptides and proteins in LC-IMS-MS/MS shotgun proteomics data. We apply it to trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS) coupled to a quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) analyzer. A highly parallelizable 4D feature detection algorithm extracts peaks which are assembled to isotope patterns. Masses are recalibrated with a non-linear m/z, retention time, ion mobility and signal intensity dependent model, based on peptides from the sample. A new matching between runs (MBR) algorithm that utilizes collisional cross section (CCS) values of MS1 features in the matching process significantly gains specificity from the extra dimension. Prerequisite for using CCS values in MBR is a relative alignment of the ion mobility values between the runs. The missing value problem in protein quantification over many samples is greatly reduced by CCS aware MBR.MS1 level label-free quantification is also implemented which proves to be highly precise and accurate on a benchmark dataset with known ground truth. MaxQuant for LC-IMS-MS/MS is part of the basic MaxQuant release and can be downloaded from http://maxquant.org.

Online Parallel Accumulation-Serial Fragmentation (PASEF) with a Novel Trapped Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometer.

In bottom-up proteomics, peptides are separated by liquid chromatography with elution peak widths in the range of seconds, whereas mass spectra are acquired in about 100 microseconds with time-of-flight (TOF) instruments. This allows adding ion mobility as a third dimension of separation. Among several formats, trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS) is attractive because of its small size, low voltage requirements and high efficiency of ion utilization. We have recently demonstrated a scan mode termed parallel accumulation - serial fragmentation (PASEF), which multiplies the sequencing speed without any loss in sensitivity (Meier et al., PMID: 26538118). Here we introduce the timsTOF Pro instrument, which optimally implements online PASEF. It features an orthogonal ion path into the ion mobility device, limiting the amount of debris entering the instrument and making it very robust in daily operation. We investigate different precursor selection schemes for shotgun proteomics to optimally allocate in excess of 100 fragmentation events per second. More than 600,000 fragmentation spectra in standard 120 min LC runs are achievable, which can be used for near exhaustive precursor selection in complex mixtures or accumulating the signal of weak precursors. In 120 min single runs of HeLa digest, MaxQuant identified more than 6,000 proteins without matching to a library and with high quantitative reproducibility (R > 0.97). Online PASEF achieves a remarkable sensitivity with more than 2,500 proteins identified in 30 min runs of only 10 ng HeLa digest. We also show that highly reproducible collisional cross sections can be acquired on a large scale (R > 0.99). PASEF on the timsTOF Pro is a valuable addition to the technological toolbox in proteomics, with a number of unique operating modes that are only beginning to be explored.

Parallel Accumulation-Serial Fragmentation (PASEF): Multiplying Sequencing Speed and Sensitivity by Synchronized Scans in a Trapped Ion Mobility Device.

In liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based proteomics, many precursors elute from the column simultaneously. In data-dependent analyses, these precursors are fragmented one at a time, whereas the others are discarded entirely. Here we employ trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS) on an orthogonal quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) mass spectrometer to remove this limitation. In TIMS, all precursor ions are accumulated in parallel and released sequentially as a function of their ion mobility. Instead of selecting a single precursor mass with the quadrupole mass filter, we here implement synchronized scans in which the quadrupole is mass positioned with sub-millisecond switching times at the m/z values of appropriate precursors, such as those derived from a topN precursor list. We demonstrate serial selection and fragmentation of multiple precursors in single 50 ms TIMS scans. Parallel accumulation-serial fragmentation (PASEF) enables hundreds of MS/MS events per second at full sensitivity. Modeling the effect of such synchronized scans for shotgun proteomics, we estimate that about a 10-fold gain in sequencing speed should be achievable by PASEF without a decrease in sensitivity.

The Impact II, a Very High-Resolution Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Instrument (QTOF) for Deep Shotgun Proteomics.

Hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) mass spectrometry is one of the two major principles used in proteomics. Although based on simple fundamentals, it has over the last decades greatly evolved in terms of achievable resolution, mass accuracy, and dynamic range. The Bruker impact platform of QTOF instruments takes advantage of these developments and here we develop and evaluate the impact II for shotgun proteomics applications. Adaption of our heated liquid chromatography system achieved very narrow peptide elution peaks. The impact II is equipped with a new collision cell with both axial and radial ion ejection, more than doubling ion extraction at high tandem MS frequencies. The new reflectron and detector improve resolving power compared with the previous model up to 80%, i.e. to 40,000 at m/z 1222. We analyzed the ion current from the inlet capillary and found very high transmission (>80%) up to the collision cell. Simulation and measurement indicated 60% transfer into the flight tube. We adapted MaxQuant for QTOF data, improving absolute average mass deviations to better than 1.45 ppm. More than 4800 proteins can be identified in a single run of HeLa digest in a 90 min gradient. The workflow achieved high technical reproducibility (R2 > 0.99) and accurate fold change determination in spike-in experiments in complex mixtures. Using label-free quantification we rapidly quantified haploid against diploid yeast and characterized overall proteome differences in mouse cell lines originating from different tissues. Finally, after high pH reversed-phase fractionation we identified 9515 proteins in a triplicate measurement of HeLa peptide mixture and 11,257 proteins in single measurements of cerebellum-the highest proteome coverage reported with a QTOF instrument so far.

Top-down analysis of 30-80 kDa proteins by electron transfer dissociation time-of-flight mass spectrometry.

Electron transfer dissociation (ETD)-based top-down mass spectrometry (MS) is the method of choice for in-depth structure characterization of large peptides, small- and medium-sized proteins, and non-covalent protein complexes. Here, we describe the performance of this approach for structural analysis of intact proteins as large as the 80 kDa serotransferrin. Current time-of-flight (TOF) MS technologies ensure adequate resolution and mass accuracy to simultaneously analyze intact 30-80 kDa protein ions and the complex mixture of their ETD product ions. Here, we show that ETD TOF MS is efficient and may provide extensive sequence information for unfolded and highly charged (around 1 charge/kDa) proteins of ~30 kDa and structural motifs embedded in larger proteins. Sequence regions protected by disulfide bonds within intact non-reduced proteins oftentimes remain uncharacterized due to the low efficiency of their fragmentation by ETD. For serotransferrin, reduction of S-S bonds leads to significantly varied ETD fragmentation pattern with higher sequence coverage of N- and C-terminal regions, providing a complementary structural information to top-down analysis of its oxidized form.

Mineralization of the metre-long biosilica structures of glass sponges is templated on hydroxylated collagen.

The minerals involved in the formation of metazoan skeletons principally comprise glassy silica, calcium phosphate or carbonate. Because of their ancient heritage, glass sponges (Hexactinellida) may shed light on fundamental questions such as molecular evolution, the unique chemistry and formation of the first skeletal silica-based structures, and the origin of multicellular animals. We have studied anchoring spicules from the metre-long stalk of the glass rope sponge (Hyalonema sieboldi; Porifera, Class Hexactinellida), which are remarkable for their size, durability, flexibility and optical properties. Using slow-alkali etching of biosilica, we isolated the organic fraction, which was revealed to be dominated by a hydroxylated fibrillar collagen that contains an unusual [Gly-3Hyp-4Hyp] motif. We speculate that this motif is predisposed for silica precipitation, and provides a novel template for biosilicification in nature.

De novo peptide sequencing by tandem MS using complementary CID and electron transfer dissociation.

De novo sequencing of peptides using tandem MS is difficult due to missing fragment ions in the spectra commonly obtained after CID of peptide precursor ions. Complementing CID spectra with spectra obtained in an ion-trap mass spectrometer upon electron transfer dissociation (ETD) significantly increases the sequence coverage with diagnostic ions. In the de novo sequencing algorithm CompNovo presented here, a divide-and-conquer approach was combined with an efficient mass decomposition algorithm to exploit the complementary information contained in CID and ETD spectra. After optimizing the parameters for the algorithm on a well-defined training data set obtained for peptides from nine known proteins, the CompNovo algorithm was applied to the de novo sequencing of peptides derived from a whole protein extract of Sorangium cellulosum bacteria. To 2406 pairs of CID and ETD spectra contained in this data set, 675 fully correct sequences were assigned, which represent a success rate of 28.1%. It is shown that the CompNovo algorithm yields significantly improved sequencing accuracy as compared with published approaches using only CID spectra or combined CID and ETD spectra.

Proteome analysis of Sorangium cellulosum employing 2D-HPLC-MS/MS and improved database searching strategies for CID and ETD fragment spectra.

Shotgun proteome analysis of the myxobacterial model strain for secondary metabolite biosynthesis Sorangium cellulosum was performed employing off-line two-dimensional high-pH reversed-phase HPLC x low-pH ion-pair reversed-phase HPLC and dual tandem mass spectrometry with collision-induced dissociation (CID) and electron transfer dissociation (ETD) as complementary fragmentation techniques. Peptide identification using database searching was optimized for ETD fragment spectra to obtain the maximum number of identifications at equivalent false discovery rates (1.0%) in the evaluation of both fragmentation techniques. In the database search of the CID MS/MS data, the mass tolerance was set to the well-established 0.3 Da window, whereas for ETD data, it was widened to 1.1 Da to account for hydrogen-rearrangement in the radical-intermediate of the peptide precursor ion. To achieve a false discovery rate comparable to the CID results, we increased the significance threshold for peptide identification to 0.001 for the ETD data. The ETD based analysis yielded about 74% of all peptides and about 78% of all proteins compared to the CID-method. In the combined data set, 952 proteins of S. cellulosum were confidently identified by at least two peptides per protein, facilitating the study of the function of regulatory proteins in the social myxobacteria and their role in secondary metabolism.

Data-dependent electron transfer dissociation of large peptides and medium size proteins in a QTOF instrument on a liquid chromatography timescale.

Liquid chromatography (LC) electron transfer dissociation (ETD) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) of protein digests is demonstrated in a hybrid quadrupole-hexapole orthogonal time-of-flight (OTOF) mass spectrometer. Analyte ions are selected in a mass-analyzing quadrupole, accumulated in the hexapole linear ETD reaction cell and mutually stored with ETD reagent anions. Product ions are collected in an ion cooler and then analyzed by an OTOF mass analyzer. The hexapole structure of the ETD reaction cell allows for a broad fragment ion mass range distribution and a high ion storage capacity. Analytically useful ETD OTOF-MS/MS spectra could be obtained at a rate of faster than 2 Hz. When used in conjunction with LC this high speed allows for several MS and MS/MS spectra to be obtained across each LC peak. An MS scan is used to select the precursor ions. With a 1 m flight tube and single reflection, resolutions of about 10 k and a mass accuracy of 5 ppm were achieved. When analyzing a 100 fmol solution of a tryptic digest of bovine serum albumin (BSA) by LC/ETD MS/MS, 27 unique peptides were identified with a summed Mascot score of 1316 using the Swiss Prot database. In addition, we explored the capability for analyzing small proteins with the present hybrid instrument. ETD MS/MS of intact ubiquitin ([M+12H](12+)) leads to the identification of the protein with a Mascot score of 264.