Core-shell magnetic bimetallic MOF material for synergistic enrichment of phosphopeptides

In proteomics, phosphorylation is an important process for protein post-translational modification (PTM), which greatly improves the diversity of proteomes. The PTM regulates almost all physiological and pathological processes such as signal transduction, cell division, proliferation, differentiation and metabolism. The abnormal expression of protein phosphorylation is also associated with cellular metabolic disorders and a range of diseases. However, in mass spectrometry-based phosphorylated peptideomics studies, phosphorylated peptide signals were inhibited by a high abundance of non-phosphorylated peptides; thus, highly selective enrichment was required. In this study, a newly designed material named Fe₃O₄@MIL(Fe/Ti) was synthesized using a layer-by-layer self-assembly technique that coats the surface of magnetic oxide nanospheres with bimetallic MOF of iron and titanium. The synergistic synthetic coating of the bimetallic MOF gives the material a large surface area and excellent hydrophilicity, which endow the nanoparticles with excellent phosphopeptide enrichment ability, high selectivity (β-casein/BSA molar ratio 1:500), a low detection limit (3 fmol), high recovery rate (85%), strong binding capacity, size exclusion ability, and ideal batch-to-batch repeatability. For comparison, we used Fe₃O₄@MIL(Fe/Ti) and two single-metal MOF materials Fe₃O₄@MIL-100(Fe) and Fe₃O₄@MIL-125(Ti), to enrich α-casein in the middle. Thus, the iron-titanium bimetallic MOF can not only enrich all the phosphorylated peptides enriched by Fe₃O₄@MIL-100(Fe) and Fe₃O₄@MIL-125(Ti), but can also specifically enrich four phosphorylated peptides. Encouraged by the excellent results of characterization and standard protein enrichment, we used this material to analyze human serum and found that bimetallic materials can effectively enrich all four phosphorylated peptides and exclude high molecular proteins. These experimental results indicate that the novel bimetallic MOF is a good candidate to analyze protein phosphorylation in complex samples.