Photo-ANA enables profiling of host-bacteria protein interactions during infection

Bacterial pathogens rapidly change and adapt their proteome to cope with the environment in host cells and secrete effector proteins to hijack host targets and ensure their survival and proliferation during infection. Excessive host proteins make it difficult to profile pathogens' proteome dynamics by conventional proteomics. It is even more challenging to map pathogen-host protein-protein interactions in real time, given the low abundance of bacterial effectors and weak and transient interactions in which they may be involved. Here we report a method for selectively labeling bacterial proteomes using a bifunctional amino acid, photo-ANA, equipped with a bio-orthogonal handle and a photoreactive warhead, which enables simultaneous analysis of bacterial proteome reprogramming and pathogen-host protein interactions of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) during infection. Using photo-ANA, we identified FLOT1/2 as host interactors of S. Typhimurium effector PipB2 in late-stage infection and globally profiled the extensive interactions between host proteins and pathogens during infection.