Perspectives of comprehensive phosphoproteome analysis using shotgun strategy

Protein phosphorylation is a ubiquitous post-translational modification that regulates almost all cellular processes. The analysis of protein phosphorylation is challenging due to the high dynamic range and low abundance natures of the analyte. Shotgun based proteomics has emerged as a very useful platform to achieve a comprehensive phosphoproteome analysis in considerable depth. In the past few years, significant breakthroughs on the large scale phosphorylation analysis have been witnessed along with the great development of related technologies. The combination of effective enrichment materials, refined analysis workflows, new type of powerful mass spectrometers, and sophisticated bioinformatic tools greatly boost the performance of comprehensive phosphoproteome analysis. In this Perspective, we briefly reviewed recent technological developments on the enrichment materials, prefractionation workflows, and different mass spectrometry fragmentation modes as well as software tools for phosphoproteome identification and quantification. Then, we described the current challenges and potential directions for the future of comprehensive phosphoproteome analysis. We also provide perspectives on how to further improve the performance of related analysis methods and technologies.