Development of activity-based probes for trypsin-family serine proteases.

A series of diphenylphosphonate-based probes were developed for the trypsin-like serine proteases. These probes selectively target serine proteases rather than general serine hydrolases that are targets for fluorophosphonate-based probes. This increased selectivity allows detection of low abundance serine proteases in complex proteomes using simple SDS-PAGE methods. We present here the application of multiple probes in enzyme activity profiling of intact mast cells, a type of inflammatory cell implicated in allergy and autoimmune diseases.