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Author Spotlight: Advancing Structural and Biochemical Studies of Proteins Through Thermal Shift Assays
Published on: August 9, 2024
SecMS analysis of selenoproteins with selenocysteine insertion sequence and beyond
Chenfang Si1, Ye Cao1, Yaoyang Zhang1
1Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
Selenocysteine (Sec, U) is the 21st amino acid, and proteins with selenocysteine are defined as selenoproteins. The currently known selenoproteins are all featured by the presence of selenocysteine insertion sequence (SECIS) on their mRNA, and SECIS plays an essential role in the selenocysteine insertion mechanism. However, due to the extremely low occurrences of selenoproteins in a whole proteome (e.g., only 25 selenoproteins in the human proteome) and the low sequence conservation of SECIS, analysis of selenoproteins and discovery of new selenoproteins exclusively on SECIS are intrinsically challenging. To this end, the selenocysteine-specific mass spectrometry (SecMS) and SECIS-independent selenoprotein (SIS) database are developed, showing abilities to profile whole selenoproteomes sensitively and to discover potential new selenoproteins. Here, we detail the SecMS strategy and propose it will advance the exploration for new selenoproteins and functional studies of selenoproteins.
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