Spatially resolved distribution of pancreatic hormones proteoforms by MALDI-imaging mass spectrometry.

Zinc plays a crucial role both in the immune system and endocrine processes. Zinc restriction in the diet has been shown to lead to degeneration of the endocrine pancreas, resulting in hormonal imbalance within the ß-cells. Proteostasismay vary depending on the stage of a pathophysiological process, which underscores the need for tools aimed at directly analyzing biological status. Among proteomics methods, MALDI-ToF-MS can serve as a rapid peptidomics tool for analyzing extracts or by histological imaging. Here we report the optimization of MALDI imaging mass spectrometry analysis of histological thin sections from mouse pancreas. This optimization enables the identification of the major islet peptide hormones as well as the major accumulated precursors and/or proteolytic products of peptide hormones. Cross-validation of the identified peptide hormones was performed by LC-ESI-MS from pancreatic islet extracts. Mice subjected to a zinc-restricted diet exhibited a relatively lower amount of peptide intermediates compared to the control group. These findings provide evidence for a complex modulation of proteostasis by micronutrients imbalance, a phenomenon directly accessed by MALDI-MSI.

Linking B-factor and temperature-induced conformational transition.

The crystallographic B-factor, also called temperature factor or Debye-Waller factor, has long been used as a surrogate for local protein flexibility. However, the use of the absolute B-factor as a probe for protein motion requires reproducible validation against conformational changes against chemical and physical variables. Here we report the investigation of the thermal dependence of the crystallographic B-factor and its correlation with conformational changes of the protein. We obtained the crystal protein structure coordinates and B-factors at high resolution (1.5 Å) over a broad temperature range (100 K to 325 K). The exponential thermal dependence of B-factor as a function of temperature was equal for both the diffraction intensity data (Wilson B-factor) and for all modeled atoms of the system (protein and non-protein atoms), with a thermal diffusion constant of about 0.0045 K-1, similar for all atoms. The extrapolated B-factor at zero Kelvin (or zero-point fluctuation) varies among the atoms, although with no apparent correlation with temperature-dependent protein conformational changes. These data suggest that the thermal vibration of the atom does not necessarily correlate with the conformational dynamics of the protein.

The reproducible normality of the crystallographic B-factor.

Reproducibility determines the utility of a measurement. In structural biology the reproducibility permeate areas such as mechanics, data measurement, data analysis and refinement. In order to access the reproducibility of the combined contribution of these sources in uncertainties of protein crystallography we evaluated four groups of parameters from data collection to final structural model. We used lysozyme as a model, with 20 datasets collected at 1.6 Å resolution using two dissimilar x-ray diffraction setups and refined through a single automatic pipeline without arbitrary interpretation. Besides statistical differences in some structural parameters, the reproducibility of the final refined models allowed the determination of positional uncertainty, in good agreement with the Luzzati coordinate error. While the raw B-factor was found non-reproducible, an empirical scaling/normalization resulted in reproducible B-factors. The validity of this empirical scaling was corroborated by the reproducibility of normalized B-factors of independently solved datasets from proteins (insulin and myoglobin) from varying space groups available from structural database. The reproducibility of normalized B-factor may reposition this displacement parameter in the analysis of chemical (ligands, pH) and physical (pressure, temperature, space groups) variables.