Department of Chemistry, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Mass Spectrom Rev. 2024 Jul-Aug;43(4):782-825. doi: 10.1002/mas.21814. Epub 2022 Oct 12.
Amyloid fibrils, insoluble β-sheets structures that arise from protein misfolding, are associated with several neurodegenerative disorders. Many small molecules have been investigated to prevent amyloid fibrils from forming; however, there are currently no therapeutics to combat these diseases. Mass spectrometry (MS) is proving to be effective for studying the high order structure (HOS) of aggregating proteins and for determining structural changes accompanying protein-inhibitor interactions. When combined with native MS (nMS), gas-phase ion mobility, protein footprinting, and chemical cross-linking, MS can afford regional and sometimes amino acid spatial resolution of the aggregating protein. The spatial resolution is greater than typical low-resolution spectroscopic, calorimetric, and the traditional ThT fluorescence methods used in amyloid research today. High-resolution approaches can struggle when investigating protein aggregation, as the proteins exist as complex oligomeric mixtures of many sizes and several conformations or polymorphs. Thus, MS is positioned to complement both high- and low-resolution approaches to studying amyloid fibril formation and protein-inhibitor interactions. This review covers basics in MS paired with ion mobility, continuous hydrogen-deuterium exchange (continuous HDX), pulsed hydrogen-deuterium exchange (pulsed HDX), fast photochemical oxidation of proteins (FPOP) and other irreversible labeling methods, and chemical cross-linking. We then review the applications of these approaches to studying amyloid-prone proteins with a focus on amyloid beta and alpha-synuclein. Another focus is the determination of protein-inhibitor interactions. The expectation is that MS will bring new insights to amyloid formation and thereby play an important role to prevent their formation.
淀粉样纤维,是由蛋白质错误折叠而产生的不可溶β-折叠结构,与多种神经退行性疾病有关。已经有许多小分子被研究用于防止淀粉样纤维的形成,但目前还没有针对这些疾病的治疗方法。质谱(MS)被证明在研究聚集蛋白的高级结构(HOS)和确定伴随蛋白-抑制剂相互作用的结构变化方面非常有效。当与天然 MS(nMS)、气相离子迁移率、蛋白质足迹和化学交联结合使用时,MS 可以提供聚集蛋白的区域和有时是氨基酸空间分辨率。空间分辨率大于目前用于淀粉样研究的典型低分辨率光谱、量热法和传统的 ThT 荧光方法。当研究蛋白质聚集时,高分辨率方法可能会遇到困难,因为蛋白质存在于许多大小和几种构象或多态体的复杂寡聚混合物中。因此,MS 可以补充高分辨率和低分辨率方法,用于研究淀粉样纤维形成和蛋白-抑制剂相互作用。这篇综述涵盖了与离子淌度、连续氘氢交换(continuous HDX)、脉冲氘氢交换(pulsed HDX)、蛋白质快速光氧化(FPOP)和其他不可逆标记方法以及化学交联相结合的 MS 基础知识。然后,我们回顾了这些方法在研究淀粉样蛋白倾向蛋白中的应用,重点是淀粉样β和α-突触核蛋白。另一个重点是确定蛋白-抑制剂的相互作用。我们期望 MS 将为淀粉样形成带来新的见解,并在防止其形成方面发挥重要作用。