Rescuing Those Left Behind: Recovering and Characterizing Underdigested Membrane and Hydrophobic Proteins To Enhance Proteome Measurement Depth

Abstract

The marine archaeon Nanoarchaeum equitans is dependent on direct physical contact with its host, the hyperthermophile Ignicoccus hospitalis. As this interaction is thought to be membrane-associated, involving a myriad of membrane-anchored proteins, proteomic efforts to better characterize this difficult to analyze interface are paramount to uncovering the mechanism of their association. By extending multienzyme digestion strategies that use sample filtration to recover underdigested proteins for reprocessing/consecutive proteolytic digestion, we applied chymotrypsin to redigest the proteinaceous material left over after initial proteolysis with trypsin of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-extracted I. hospitalis-N. equitans proteins. Using this method, we show that proteins with increased hydrophobic character, including membrane proteins with multiple transmembrane helices, are enriched and recovered in the underdigested fraction. Chymotryptic reprocessing provided significant sequence coverage gains in both soluble and hydrophobic proteins alike, with the latter benefiting more so in terms of membrane protein representation. These gains were despite a large proportion of high-quality peptide spectra remaining unassigned in the underdigested fraction suggesting high levels of protein modification on these often surface-exposed proteins. Importantly, these gains were achieved without applying extensive fractionation strategies usually required for thorough characterization of membrane-associated proteins and were facilitated by the generation of a distinct, complementary set of peptides that aid in both the identification and quantitation of this important, under-represented class of proteins.