Rapid Online Non-Enzymatic Protein Digestion Combining Microwave Heating Acid Hydrolysis and Electrochemical Oxidation

摘要

We report an online non-enzymatic method for site-specific digestion of proteins to yield peptides that are well suited for collision induced dissociation (CID) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). The method combines online microwave heating acid hydrolysis at aspartic acid and online electrochemical oxidation at tryptophan and tyrosine. The combined microwave/electrochemical (microwave/echem) digestion is reproducible and produces peptides with an average sequence length of 10 amino acids. This peptide length is similar to the average peptide length of 9 amino acids obtained by digestion of proteins with the enzyme trypsin. As a result, the peptides produced by this novel non-enzymatic digestion method, when analyzed by ESI-MS, produce protonated molecules with mostly +1 and +2 charge states. The combination of these two non-enzymatic methods overcomes shortcomings with each individual method in that: i) peptides generated by the microwave-hydrolysis method have an average amino acid length of 16 amino acids, and ii) the inability of the electrochemical-cleavage method to reproducibly digest proteins with molecular masses above 4 kDa. Preliminary results are presented on the application and utility of this rapid online digestion (total of 6 min digestion time) on a series of standard peptides and proteins as well as an E. coli protein extract.