Methionine residues around phosphorylation sites are preferentially oxidized in vivo under stress conditions

Protein phosphorylation is one of the most prevalent and well-understood protein modifications. Oxidation of protein-bound methionine, which has been traditionally perceived as an inevitable damage derived from oxidative stress, is now emerging as another modification capable of regulating protein activity during stress conditions. However, the mechanism coupling oxidative signals to changes in protein function remains unknown. An appealing hypothesis is that methionine oxidation might serve as a rheostat to control phosphorylation. To investigate this potential crosstalk between phosphorylation and methionine oxidation, we have addressed the co-occurrence of these two types of modifications within the human proteome. Here, we show that nearly all (98%) proteins containing oxidized methionine were also phosphoproteins. Furthermore, phosphorylation sites were much closer to oxidized methionines when compared to non-oxidized methionines. This proximity between modification sites cannot be accounted for by their co-localization within unstructured clusters because it was faithfully reproduced in a smaller sample of structured proteins. We also provide evidence that the oxidation of methionine located within phosphorylation motifs is a highly selective process among stress-related proteins, which supports the hypothesis of crosstalk between methionine oxidation and phosphorylation as part of the cellular defence against oxidative stress.