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Iodination of tyrosine residues in proteins has many uses in chemistry, biology, and medicine. Site specific identification of the sites of iodination is important for many of these uses. Reported herein is a facile method employing photodissociation and mass spectrometry to localize sites of iodination in whole proteins. Absorption of ultraviolet photons by iodotyrosine results in loss of iodine via homolytic bond dissociation. The resulting protein radical fragments in the vicinity of the iodotyrosine upon collisional activation. Analysis of the fragments within the vicinity of each tyrosine residue in the protein enables quantitative evaluation of the likelihood for iodination at each site. The results are compared with both traditional bottom up and top down mass spectrometric methods. Radical directed dissociation yields results in agreement with traditional approaches but requires significantly less effort and is inherently more sensitive. One limitation occurs when multiple tyrosine residues are in close proximity, in which case the extent of iodination at each residue may be difficult to determine. This limitation is frequently problematic for traditional approaches as well. 10.1021/ac100256v

The fragmentation chemistry of anionic deprotonated hydrogen-deficient radical peptides is investigated. Homolytic photodissociation of carbon-iodine bonds with 266 nm light is used to generate the radical species, which are subsequently subjected to collisional activation to induce further dissociation. The charges do not play a central role in the fragmentation chemistry; hence deprotonated peptides that fragment via radical directed dissociation do so via mechanisms which have been reported previously for protonated peptides. However, charge polarity does influence the overall fragmentation of the peptide. For example, the absence of mobile protons favors radical directed dissociation for singly deprotonated peptides. Similarly, a favorable dissociation mechanism initiated at the N-terminus is more notable for anionic peptides where the N-terminus is not protonated (which inhibits the mechanism). In addition, collisional activation of the anionic peptides containing carbon-iodine bonds leads to homolytic cleavage and generation of the radical species, which is not observed for protonated peptides presumably due to competition from lower energy dissociation channels. Finally, for multiply deprotonated radical peptides, electron detachment becomes a competitive channel both during the initial photoactivation and following subsequent collisional activation of the radical. Possible mechanisms that might account for this novel collision-induced electron detachment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human chemokine lymphotactin (Ltn) is a remarkable protein that interconverts between two unrelated native state structures in the condensed phase. It is possible to shift the equilibrium toward either conformation with selected sequence substitutions. Previous results have shown that a disulfide-stabilized variant preferentially adopts the canonical chemokine fold (Ltn10), while a single amino acid change (W55D) favors the novel Ltn40 dimeric structure. Selective noncovalent adduct protein probing (SNAPP) is a recently developed method for examining solution phase protein structure. Herein, it is demonstrated that SNAPP can easily recognize and distinguish between the Ltn10 and Ltn40 states of lymphotactin in aqueous solution. The effects of organic denaturants, acid, and disulfide bond reduction and blocking were also examined using SNAPP for the CC3, W55D, and wild type proteins. Only disulfide reduction was shown to significantly perturb the protein, and resulted in considerably decreased adduct formation consistent with loss of tertiary/secondary structure. Cold denaturation experiments demonstrated that wild-type Ltn is the most temperature sensitive of the three proteins. Examination of the higher charge states in all experiments, which are presumed to represent transition state structures between Ltn-10 and Ltn-40, reveals increased 18C6 attachment relative to the more folded structures. This observation is consistent with increased competitive intramolecular hydrogen bonding, which may guide the transition. Experiments examining the gas phase structures revealed that all three proteins can be structurally distinguished in the gas phase. In addition, the gas phase experiments enabled identification of preferred adduct binding sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultraviolet photodissociation of peptides followed by mass analysis has several desirable advantages relative to other methods, yet it has not found widespread use due to several limitations. One shortcoming is the inefficiency with which peptides absorb in the ultraviolet. This issue has a simple solution and can be circumvented by the attachment of noncovalent adducts that contain appropriate chromophores. Subsequent photoactivation of the chromophore leads to vibrational excitation of the complex and eventually to fragmentation of the peptide. Herein, the energetics that control the efficiency of this process are examined as a function of the characteristics of both the peptide and the noncovalently attached chromophore. Fragmentation efficiency decreases with increasing peptide size and is also constrained by the binding energy of the noncovalent adduct. The optimum chromophore should have excellent absorption at the excitation wavelength and a low luminescence quantum yield. It is demonstrated that a naphthyl based 18-crown-6 adduct is ideally suited for attaching to a variety peptides and fragmenting them following absorption of 266 nm light. Potential applications and limitations of this methodology are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Electroreduction of nitrate (NO 3 RR) to ammonia in membraneless electrolyzers is of great significance for reducing the cost and saving energy consumption. However, severe chemical crossover with side reactions makes it challenging to achieve ideal electrolysis. Herein, we propose a general strategy for efficient membraneless ammonia synthesis by screening NO 3 RR catalysts with inferior oxygen reduction activity and matching the counter electrode (CE) with good oxygen evolution activity while blocking anodic ammonia oxidation. Consequently, screening the available Co-Co system, the membraneless NO 3 - -to-NH 3 conversion performance was significantly higher than H-type cells using costly proton-exchange membranes. At 200 mA cm -2 , the full-cell voltage of the membraneless system (∼2.5 V) is 4 V lower than that of the membrane system (∼6.5 V), and the savings are 61.4 kW h (or 56.9%) per 1 kg NH 3 produced. A well-designed pulse process, inducing reversible surface reconstruction that in situ generates and restores the active Co(III) species at the working electrode and forms favorable Co 3 O 4 /CoOOH at the CE, further significantly improves NO 3 - -to-NH 3 conversion and blocks side reactions. A maximum NH 3 yield rate of 1500.9 μmol cm -2 h -1 was achieved at -0.9 V (Faraday efficiency 92.6%). This pulse-coupled membraneless strategy provides new insights into design complex electrochemical synthesis.

A crown ether based, photolabile radical precursor which forms noncovalent complexes with peptides has been prepared. The peptide/precursor complexes can be electrosprayed, isolated in an ion trap, and then subjected to laser photolysis and collision induced dissociation to generate hydrogen deficient peptide radicals. It is demonstrated that these peptide radicals behave very differently from the hydrogen rich peptide radicals generated by electron capture methods. In fact, it is shown that side chain chemistry dictates both the occurrence and relative abundance of backbone fragments that are observed. Fragmentation at aromatic residues occurs preferentially over most other amino acids. The origin of this selectivity relates to the mechanism by which backbone dissociation is initiated. The first step is abstraction of a beta-hydrogen from the side chain, followed by beta-elimination to yield primarily a-type fragment ions. Calculations reveal that those side chains which can easily lose a beta-hydrogen correlate well with experimentally favored sites for backbone fragmentation. In addition, radical mediated side chain losses from the parent peptide are frequently observed. Eleven amino acids exhibit unique mass losses from side chains which positively identify that particular amino acid as part of the parent peptide. Therefore, side chain losses allow one to unambiguously narrow the possible sequences for a parent peptide, which when combined with predictable backbone fragmentation should lead to greatly increased confidence in peptide identification.

The effects of temperature, pH, and salt concentration on the layer-by-layer (LBL) deposition of sodium poly(styrene sulfonate) (PSS)/poly[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate] (PDEM) were investigated by use of a quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D). At pH 4, the frequency change (Deltaf) gradually decreased to a constant, indicating that the polyelectrolyte complexes of the layer were not dissolved. As the layer number increased, the -Deltaf oscillatedly increased, indicating that the thickness of the multilayer increased. At the same time, the dissipation change (DeltaD) oscillatedly increased with the layer number, indicating the chain interpenetration or complexation that led to the alternative swelling-and-shrinking of the outermost layer. For the same layer number, as the temperature increased, the amplitude of DeltaD increased, indicating that the chain interpenetration increased. The thickness also increased with temperature. Further increasing the pH to 7 led to a thicker layer, reflected in the larger amplitude of DeltaD. At pH 10, the polyelectrolytes no longer formed multilayers on the surface because of the lack of electrostatic interactions. On the other hand, the addition of NaCl also led to a thickness increase. The amplitude in DeltaD increased with NaCl concentration, indicating that the chain interpenetration increased. Our experiments indicated that the LBL deposition of polyelectrolytes was dominated by the chain interpenetration. Also, the polyelectrolyte complexes in the layer can redissolve into solution from the surface at a high temperature or a high salt concentration.