Facile synthesis of guanidyl-based magnetic ionic covalent organic framework composites for selective enrichment of phosphopeptides.

Protein phosphorylation plays vital roles in the regulation of various biological processes involving in protein folding, molecular recognition, cell growth, and metabolism. It is prerequisite to develop effective enrichment methods of trace phosphopeptides before mass spectrometry (MS) analysis. In this study, we proposed a facile strategy to synthesize magnetic ionic covalent organic frameworks (Fe3O4@iCOFs) for the capture of phosphopeptides with guanidyl as the ionic ligand instead of the post-synthetic functionalization strategy. The developed Fe3O4@iCOFs contain a large amount of amino groups, positive charge, as well as owned superparamagnetism. The enrichment of phosphopeptides is based on the electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bonds formed between phosphate groups and guanidyl groups. By combing with MS determinations, high sensitivity of phosphopeptides (the lowest detection amount being 0.4 fmol) was achieved. The obtained material provided selective enrichment capacity of phosphopeptides from non-fat milk digest and HeLa cells, showing great potential in the detection of low-abundance phosphopeptides in complex real samples.