Volume 134, Issue 5 e202112107
Forschungsartikel

Tunable Amine-Reactive Electrophiles for Selective Profiling of Lysine

Kuei-Chien Tang

Kuei-Chien Tang

Present address: Department of Chemistry, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322 USA

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Dr. Jian Cao

Dr. Jian Cao

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA

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Lisa M. Boatner

Lisa M. Boatner

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA

Present address: Department of Biological Chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA

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Linwei Li

Linwei Li

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA

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Jonathan Farhi

Jonathan Farhi

Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322 USA

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Prof. Dr. Kendall N. Houk

Prof. Dr. Kendall N. Houk

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA

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Prof. Dr. Jennifer Spangle

Prof. Dr. Jennifer Spangle

Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322 USA

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Prof. Dr. Keriann M. Backus

Prof. Dr. Keriann M. Backus

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA

Present address: Department of Biological Chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 USA

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Prof. Dr. Monika Raj

Corresponding Author

Prof. Dr. Monika Raj

Present address: Department of Chemistry, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322 USA

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First published: 11 November 2021
Citations: 2

Abstract

Proteome profiling by activated esters identified >9000 ligandable lysines but they are limited as covalent inhibitors due to poor hydrolytic stability. Here we report our efforts to design and discover a new series of tunable amine-reactive electrophiles (TAREs) for selective and robust labeling of lysine. The major challenges in developing selective probes for lysine are the high nucleophilicity of cysteines and poor hydrolytic stability. Our work circumvents these challenges by a unique design of the TAREs that form stable adducts with lysine and on reaction with cysteine generate another reactive electrophiles for lysine. We highlight that TAREs exhibit substantially high hydrolytic stability as compared to the activated esters and are non-cytotoxic thus have the potential to act as covalent ligands. We applied these alternative TAREs for the intracellular labeling of proteins in different cell lines, and for the selective identification of lysines in the human proteome on a global scale.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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