Modification of Luffa Sponge for Enrichment of Phosphopeptides

The enrichment technique is crucial to the comprehensive analysis of protein phosphorylation. In this work, a facile, green and efficient synthetic method was set up for quaternization of luffa sponge. The resultant luffa sponge showed strong anion-exchange characteristics and a high adsorption ability for phosphate ions. Along with the unique physical properties, e.g., tenacity and porous texture, quaternized luffa sponge was demonstrated to be a well-suited solid-phase extraction (SPE) material. The quaternized luffa sponge-based SPE method was simple, cost-effective and convenient in operation, and was successfully applied to the capture of phosphopeptides from protein digests. The enrichment approach exhibited exceptionally high selectivity, sensitivity and strong anti-interference ability. Four phosphopeptides were still detected by using the digest mixture of β-casein and bovine serum albumin with a molar ratio of 1:100. 21 phosphopeptides were identified from the tryptic digest of non-fat milk.