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Peiran Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Peiran Liu.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Optimization of diagonal chromatography for recognizing post-translational modifications.

Post-translational modifications modulate the activity of most eukaryote proteins. Analysis of these modifications presents a formidable analytical challenge. This paper examines the potential of diagonal chromatography for recognizing post-translational modifications. Diagonal chromatography is the process of using the same chromatographic separation in two dimensions. Between the two dimensions, a chemical modification is applied to all fractions. Substances that have been modified are revealed by the change in their chromatographic properties between the two dimensions. When the modification is specific to a particular type of post-translational modification, peptides that carry the modification have the potential to be revealed. Changes in the retention time of modified peptides have to be large enough to be different from unmodified peptides. Tyrosine, serine, and threonine phosphorylation were identified with diagonal chromatography. Heptafluorobutyric acid was used as an ion-pairing agent to improve the selectivity between serine and threonine phosphorylated peptides and parent peptides after dephosphorylation. The diagonal chromatography method was also examined in the recognition of glycopeptides. However, changes of retention time after deglycosylation were considered to be too small to make this an unequivocal method for the study of glycosylation.

Chromatography↗

Comparative proteomics based on stable isotope labeling and affinity selection.

Disease, external stimuli (such as drugs and toxins), and mutations cause changes in the rate of protein synthesis, post-translational modification, inter-compartmental transport, and degradation of proteins in living systems. Recognizing and identifying the small number of proteins involved is complicated by the complexity of biological extracts and the fact that post-translational alterations of proteins can occur at many sites in multiple ways. It is shown here that a variety of new tools and methods based on internal standard technology are now being developed to code globally all peptides in control and experimental samples for quantification. The great advantage of these stable isotope-labeling strategies is that mass spectrometers can rapidly target those proteins that have changed in concentration for further analysis. When coupled to stable isotope quantification, targeting can be further focused through chromatographic selection of peptide classes on the basis of specific structural features. Targeting structural features is particularly useful when they are unique to types of regulation or disease. Differential displays of targeted peptides show that stimulus-specific markers are relatively easy to identify and will probably be diagnostically valuable tools.

Animals↗

An isotope coding strategy for proteomics involving both amine and carboxyl group labeling.

This paper describes a heavy isotope coding strategy for the analysis of all types of tryptic peptides, including those that are N-terminally blocked and from the C-terminus of proteins. The method exploits differential derivatization of amine and carboxyl groups generated during proteolysis as a means of coding. Carboxyl groups produced during proteolysis incorporate 18O from H218O. Peptides from the C-terminus of proteins were not labeled with 18O unless they contained a basic C-terminal amino acid. Primary amines from control and experimental samples were differentially acylated after proteolysis with either 1H3- or 2H3-N-acetoxysuccinamide. When these two types of labeling were combined, unique coding patterns were achieved for peptides arising from the C-termini and blocked N-termini of proteins. This method was used to (1) distinguish C-terminal peptides in model proteins, (2) recognize N-terminal peptides from proteins in which the amino terminus is acylated, and (3) identify primary structure variations between proteins from different sources.

Amines↗