LiF-MS+, a revised technique for mapping peptide-protein interactions

Short linear motifs are sequences of amino acids present in unstructured polypeptide regions that function as ligands for specific sites on folded protein domains. These interactions, which often occur with low to modest affinity, modulate dynamic biological processes such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. We recently described Ligand Footprinting-Mass Spectrometry (LiF-MS), a technique that rapidly and precisely maps sites at which short peptide ligands bind their biologically relevant recognition sites on folded protein domains. This approach marks the binding location of a peptide ligand on a structured protein using a cleavable crosslinker appended to the ligand that leaves behind a stable chemical modification following cleavage. This modification serves as a mass tag detectable by mass spectrometry, pinpointing sites of peptide ligand binding. Here we present LiF-MS+, an improved version of the footprinting technique that replaces the butanol mass tag with 1-butylpyrrolidine, which is positively charged at neutral pH and thus aids in ionization of the crosslinked peptide for analysis by mass spectrometry. We show ligand-mediated butylpyrrolidine footprinting effectively maps the well characterized binding interaction of the p38α mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) with a MKK6 D-motif short linear motif peptide ligand, uncovering additional binding site information not observed in our original experiment. LiF-MS+ is thus a straightforward improvement of our previously published methodology for mapping the binding of short linear motifs to folded protein domains.