Determination of the Substrate Specificity of Protein Kinases with Peptide Micro- and Macroarrays

Elucidation of the key determinants for the phosphorylation site specificities of protein kinases facilitates identification of their physiological substrates, and serves to better define their critical roles in the signaling networks that underlie a multitude of cellular activities. Albeit with some apparent limitations, such as the lack of contextual information for secondary substrate-binding sites, the synthetic peptide-based approach has been adopted widely for the kinase specificity profiling studies, especially when they are used in an array format, which permits the screening of large numbers of potential peptide substrates in parallel. In this chapter, we present detailed protocols for determining protein kinase substrate specificity using an approach that involves both peptide microarrays and macroarrays. In particular, SPOT synthesis on macroarrays can be used to follow up on in silico predictions of protein kinase substrate specificity with predictive algorithms.