Single-step inline hydroxyapatite enrichment facilitates identification and quantitation of phosphopeptides from mass-limited proteomes with MudPIT.

Herein we report the characterization and optimization of single-step inline enrichment of phosphopeptides directly from small amounts of whole cell and tissue lysates (100-500 μg) using a hydroxyapatite (HAP) microcolumn and Multidimensional Protein Identification Technology (MudPIT). In comparison to a triplicate HILIC-IMAC phosphopeptide enrichment study, ∼80% of the phosphopeptides identified using HAP-MudPIT were unique. Similarly, analysis of the consensus phosphorylation motifs between the two enrichment methods illustrates the complementarity of calcium- and iron-based enrichment methods and the higher sensitivity and selectivity of HAP-MudPIT for acidic motifs. We demonstrate how the identification of more multiply phosphorylated peptides from HAP-MudPIT can be used to quantify phosphorylation cooperativity. Through optimization of HAP-MudPIT on a whole cell lysate we routinely achieved identification and quantification of ca. 1000 phosphopeptides from a ∼1 h enrichment and 12 h MudPIT analysis on small quantities of material. Finally, we applied this optimized method to identify phosphorylation sites from a mass-limited mouse brain region, the amygdala (200-500 μg), identifying up to 4000 phosphopeptides per run.