We present a variation of the QUICK (QUantitative Immunoprecipitation Combined with Knockdown) approach that was introduced previously to distinguish between true and false protein-protein interactions. Our approach is based on 15N metabolic labeling, the modulation of affinities of protein-protein interactions by the presence/absence of ATP, immunoprecipitation, and quantitative mass spectrometry.
Protein-protein interactions are fundamental for many biological processes in the cell. Therefore, their characterization plays an important role in current research and a plethora of methods for their investigation is available1. Protein-protein interactions often are highly dynamic and may depend on subcellular localization, post-translational modifications and the local protein environment2. Therefore, they should be investigated in their natural environment, for which co-immunoprecipitation approaches are the method of choice3. Co-precipitated interaction partners are identified either by immunoblotting in a targeted approach, or by mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in an untargeted way. The latter strategy often is adversely affected by a large number of false positive discoveries, mainly derived from the high sensitivity of modern mass spectrometers that confidently detect traces of unspecifically precipitating proteins. A recent approach to overcome this problem is based on the idea that reduced amounts of specific interaction partners will co-precipitate with a given target protein whose cellular concentration is reduced by RNAi, while the amounts of unspecifically precipitating proteins should be unaffected. This approach, termed QUICK for QUantitative Immunoprecipitation Combined with Knockdown4, employs Stable Isotope Labeling of Amino acids in Cell culture (SILAC)5 and MS to quantify the amounts of proteins immunoprecipitated from wild-type and knock-down strains. Proteins found in a 1:1 ratio can be considered as contaminants, those enriched in precipitates from the wild type as specific interaction partners of the target protein. Although innovative, QUICK bears some limitations: first, SILAC is cost-intensive and limited to organisms that ideally are auxotrophic for arginine and/or lysine. Moreover, when heavy arginine is fed, arginine-to-proline interconversion results in additional mass shifts for each proline in a peptide and slightly dilutes heavy with light arginine, which makes quantification more tedious and less accurate5,6. Second, QUICK requires that antibodies are titrated such that they do not become saturated with target protein in extracts from knock-down mutants.
Here we introduce a modified QUICK protocol which overcomes the abovementioned limitations of QUICK by replacing SILAC for 15N metabolic labeling and by replacing RNAi-mediated knock-down for affinity modulation of protein-protein interactions. We demonstrate the applicability of this protocol using the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as model organism and the chloroplast HSP70B chaperone as target protein7 (Figure 1). HSP70s are known to interact with specific co-chaperones and substrates only in the ADP state8. We exploit this property as a means to verify the specific interaction of HSP70B with its nucleotide exchange factor CGE19.
1. Antibody Adsorption
(Note that all steps from this point on need to be carried out with gloves to avoid contamination with keratin and on ice to avoid protein degradation/complex dissociation.)
(Note that affinity-purified antibodies should be used to reduce contamination by unspecific IgGs, which interfere with nano-LC-MS analysis – for a protocol see Willmund et al. (2005)10. CF1β is precipitated as a loading control and was chosen because it is abundant and, after cell lysis, present in soluble and membrane fractions. Alternatively, levels of contaminating proteins may be used to normalize for unequal loading.)
2. Cell Lysis, Crosslinking and Sample Preparation
3. Immunoprecipitation
4. Sample Preparation for nano-LC-MS/MS
5. Representative Results
As shown exemplarily for the 14N-labeled cell extracts in Figure 2A, HSP70B and CGE1 are almost exclusively localized to the soluble fraction, independent of the ATP state. In contrast, CF1β is localized to soluble and membrane-enriched fractions, as sonication shears part of it from membrane-located CFo, and therefore serves as loading control for both fractions. As shown in Figure 2B, similar amounts of HSP70B were precipitated with the anti-HSP70B antibodies from 14N- and 15N-labeled soluble extracts, independent of the ATP state. In contrast, only little HSP70B was precipitated from membrane fractions with slightly larger amounts originating from ATP-depleted membrane fractions as compared to ATP replete fractions, hence corroborating earlier results9. No CGE1 was co-precipitated with HSP70B in ATP-replete soluble or membrane fractions, while large amounts of CGE1 were co-precipitated with HSP70B from ATP-depleted soluble fractions, and little from ATP-depleted membrane fractions.
The interaction of CGE1 with HSP70B only in the ADP state is also observed in the MS analysis: in Figure 3, representative MS1 spectra of HSP70B and CGE1 peptides from precipitates generated with the HSP70B antiserum from soluble cell extracts are shown. In the experiment shown in Figure 3A, precipitates were from mixtures of 14N-labeled extracts lacking ATP and 15N-labeled extracts containing ATP. While the heavy and light labeled form of the HSP70B peptide were detected at equal intensities, only the light labeled form of the CGE1 peptide (from -ATP extracts) was found. In Figure 3B the same peptides from the anti-HSP70B precipitate derived from mixtures of reciprocally labeled soluble cell extracts are shown. Accordingly, this time only the heavy labeled form of the CGE1 peptide (from -ATP extracts) was detected, while this was again the case for both, light and heavy labeled HSP70B peptides.
Figure 1. Experimental workflow. Cells are metabolically labeled with 14N and 15N for at least 10 generations, harvested and supplied with or depleted from ATP. After cell lysis protein complexes optionally may be crosslinked (X-link) with DSP. Lysed cells are then separated in soluble (Sol) and membrane enriched (Pel) fractions. Target proteins (here HSP70B) and a control protein (here CF1β) are immunoprecipitated with specific antibodies coupled to protein A sepharose beads (black). After washing, precipitated proteins are eluted and either directly analyzed by immunoblotting, or the respective 14N- and 15N-labeled fractions in +ATP and -ATP states are pooled, digested and analyzed by nano-LC-MS/MS. In the example case shown here the 15N-labeled fraction was depleted from ATP. Accordingly, the ratio of intensities of heavy labeled (dark colors) to light labeled (light colors) peptides from the control protein (CF1β), the target protein (HSP70B) and non-specifically bound contaminants should be around one, while this ratio is expected to be very high for proteins specifically interacting with the target protein (CGE1). Click here to view larger figure.
Figure 2. A Analysis of the input for HSP70B immunoprecipitation. Total protein was extracted from soluble (Sol) and membrane enriched (Pel) fractions either depleted from ATP (-ATP) or supplemented with ATP and an ATP regenerating system (+ATP). 0.01% of the protein extracts were separated on a 10% SDS-polyacrylamide gel, and levels of HSP70B and CGE1 protein relative to loading control CF1β were analyzed by immunoblotting. B Analysis of immunoprecipitates. HSP70B was immunoprecipitated from 14N- and 15N-labeled soluble and membrane-enriched cell extracts containing or lacking ATP. Proteins corresponding to 3.3% of the immunoprecipitates were separated on a 10% SDS-polyacrylamide gel and levels of HSP70B and CGE1 relative to loading control CF1β were analyzed by immunoblotting. Click here to view larger figure.
Figure 3. A Representative mass spectra of HSP70B and CGE1 peptides from anti-HSP70B immunoprecipitates performed on mixed soluble fractions (14N -ATP/15N +ATP). Full MS spectra of 14N and 15N labeled peptides, corresponding to the -ATP and +ATP states, respectively, from HSP70B and co-immunoprecipitated CGE1 are shown. Both peptides are triply charged, the HSP70B peptide contains 22 nitrogen atoms, the CGE1 peptide 19, corresponding to a mass shift of 7.33 and 6.33 m/z, respectively. B Representative mass spectra from the reciprocal experiment (14N +ATP/15N -ATP). Full MS spectra of the same 14N and 15N labeled peptides, here corresponding to the +ATP and -ATP states, respectively, from HSP70B and co-immunoprecipitated CGE1 are shown. Click here to view larger figure.
We have recently introduced two improvements to the QUICK approach: a crosslinking step for capturing transient protein-protein interactions (QUICK-X), and a control precipitation to normalize for unequal precipitation efficiencies6. Here we present a protocol containing two more improvements of QUICK: first, we replace SILAC5 for 15N metabolic labeling. The advantages are that 15N metabolic labeling is much cheaper than SILAC, if 15N is provided as simple inorganic salt. Furthermore, with 15N metabolic labeling QUICK can be applied to organisms prototrophic for all amino acids, like most plants, fungi and bacteria. And finally, arginine-to-proline interconversion inherent to SILAC5,6 does not present a problem for quantification of 15N labeled peptides. Examples for suitable tools for the quantitative evaluation of 15N proteomics data are MSQUANT12 or IOMIQS13.
Second, we introduce affinity modulation as a means for specifically reducing the amount of proteins interacting with a given target protein in one sample versus another. The advantages of this approach are that it circumvents the construction of knockdown mutants, which for some model systems are difficult to generate or cannot be generated at all in case of essential target proteins. Moreover, it avoids misinterpretations caused by differential protein expression potentially occurring as a response of the cell to knocking-down a target protein: if other proteins are down-regulated as well and cross-react with the antiserum used for immunoprecipitation, they would be interpreted as true interaction partners of the target protein. At last, affinity modulation abolishes the need of finding a proper antibody-to-antigen ratio.
Although we apply our protocol to Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as model organism, it can easily be adapted to any other organism that can be grown in cell culture and is able to use ammonium or nitrate as nitrogen source. Affinity modulation of protein complexes by ATP/ADP may directly be applied to other chaperones whose interaction with substrates and cohort proteins depends on the ATP state, like the GroEL/HSP60/Cpn60 or HSP90 chaperone systems14,15, or to any other system where binding affinities are modulated by ATP. Affinity modulation should also work for cases where affinities between protein interactions are altered by specific drugs, like radicicol or geldanamycin in the case of HSP90 systems15.
A clear limitation of our protocol is that it requires affinity-purified antibodies against a target protein known to be sensitive to a specific treatment/drug that modulates its affinity for partner proteins. Therefore, it is no high-throughput method.
The authors have nothing to disclose.
We thank Olivier Vallon for the antiserum against CF1β. This work was supported by the Max Planck Society and grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Schr 617/5-1) and the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Systems Biology Initiative FORSYS, project GoFORSYS).
Name of the reagent | Company | Catalogue number | Comments (optional) |
ProteinA Sepharose | Sigma-Aldrich | P3391 | |
DMP (Dimethyl pimelimidate) | Sigma-Aldrich | D8388 | Store desiccated at -20 °C, dissolve directly before use |
Protease inhibitor (complete, EDTA-free) | Roche Applied Science | 11873580001 | |
ATP (Adenosin-5′-triphosphat) | Carl Roth | K054 | |
Creatine phosphate | Sigma-Aldrich | 27920 | |
Creatine phosphokinase | Sigma-Aldrich | C7886 | |
DSP Dithiobis [succinimidyl propionate] | Thermo Sientific | 22585 | Store desiccated at 4 °C |
15NH4Cl | Cambridge isotope laboratories, Andover, MA | NLM-467 | |
Lys-C (Endoproteinase Lys-C) |
Roche Applied Science | 11047825001 | |
Trypsin beads (Poroszyme Immobilized Trypsin) | Applied Biosystems | 2-3127-00 | Mix vigorously directly before use |
Empore C18 47 mm Disk | Varian | 12145004 |