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Updated: Sep 29, 2025

Profiling Ubiquitin and Ubiquitin-like Dependent Post-translational Modifications and Identification of Significant Alterations
Published on: November 7, 2019
ABPP-HT*-Deep Meets Fast for Activity-Based Profiling of Deubiquitylating Enzymes Using Advanced DIA Mass
Hannah B L Jones1, Raphael Heilig1, Simon Davis1,2
1Target Discovery Institute, Centre for Medicines Discovery, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7FZ, UK.
Abstract:
Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) uses a combination of activity-based chemical probes with mass spectrometry (MS) to selectively characterise a particular enzyme or enzyme class. ABPP has proven invaluable for profiling enzymatic inhibitors in drug discovery. When applied to cell extracts and cells, challenging the ABP-enzyme complex formation with a small molecule can simultaneously inform on potency, selectivity, reversibility/binding affinity, permeability, and stability. ABPP can also be applied to pharmacodynamic studies to inform on cellular target engagement within specific organs when applied to in vivo models. Recently, we established separate high depth and high throughput ABPP (ABPP-HT) protocols for the profiling of deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs). However, the combination of the two, deep and fast, in one method has been elusive. To further increase the sensitivity of the current ABPP-HT workflow, we implemented state-of-the-art data-independent acquisition (DIA) and data-dependent acquisition (DDA) MS analysis tools. Hereby, we describe an improved methodology, ABPP-HT* (enhanced high-throughput-compatible activity-based protein profiling) that in combination with DIA MS methods, allowed for the consistent profiling of 35-40 DUBs and provided a reduced number of missing values, whilst maintaining a throughput of 100 samples per day.

