Mass spectrometry following mild enzymatic digestion reveals phosphorylation of recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli through mechanisms involving direct nucleotide binding.

A straightforward method using mild enzymatic digestions combined with MALDI mass spectrometry (MS) was used to enhance determination of the multiple phosphorylation sites of a set of recombinant nucleotide-binding proteins in Escherichia coli, including kinases and cystathionine beta-synthase (CBS) domain containing proteins. The protein kinases reveal abundant phosphorylations in the kinase domains and relatively low phosphogluconoylation (258 Da) at the N-terminal His-tag. In contrast, the CBS domain-containing proteins possess a highly conserved phosphorylation in vivo at Ser-2 of the His-tag. Multistage MS/MS and selected reaction monitoring established that the CBS domain proteins also contain a combined modification of gluconoylation (178 Da) and phosphorylation (80 Da) at two different sites, instead of an isobaric phosphogluconoylation (258 Da) event at the N-terminus. Functional analysis of 20 recombinant proteins as identified by mass spectrometry has shown the phosphorylation at the N-terminal His-tag is relevant to nucleotide binding and phosphotransfer reaction catalyzed by a serine protein kinase.