Fast and Highly Efficient Affinity Enrichment of Azide-A-DSBSO Cross-Linked Peptides

Cross-linking mass spectrometry is an increasingly used, powerful technique to study protein-protein interactions or to provide structural information. Due to substochiometric reaction efficiencies, cross-linked peptides are usually low abundance. This results in challenging data evaluation and the need for an effective enrichment. Here we describe an improved, easy to implement, one-step method to enrich azide-tagged, acid-cleavable disuccinimidyl bis-sulfoxide (DSBSO) cross-linked peptides using dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO) coupled Sepharose beads. We probed this method using recombinant Cas9 and E. coli ribosome. For Cas9, the number of detectable cross-links was increased from ∼100 before enrichment to 580 cross-links after enrichment. To mimic a cellular lysate, E. coli ribosome was spiked into a tryptic HEK background at a ratio of 1:2-1:100. The number of detectable unique cross-links was maintained high at ∼100. The estimated enrichment efficiency was improved by a factor of 4-5 (based on XL numbers) compared to enrichment via biotin and streptavidin. We were still able to detect cross-links from 0.25 microg cross-linked E. coli ribosomes in a background of 100 microg tryptic HEK peptides, indicating a high enrichment sensitivity. In contrast to conventional enrichment techniques, like SEC, the time needed for preparation and MS measurement is significantly reduced. This robust, fast, and selective enrichment method for azide-tagged linkers will contribute to mapping protein-protein interactions, investigating protein architectures in more depth, and helping to understand complex biological processes.