The Identification of Proteolytic Substrates of Calpain-5 with N-Terminomics

Calpain-5/CAPN5 is a calcium-activated, non-lysosomal cysteine (thiol) protease. The substrate repertoire of CAPN5 is not known. Calpains catalyze limited proteolysis of their substrates, generating neo-N-termini that correspond to internal residues of their nascent substrate proteins. To identify such neo-N-termini generated by CAPN5, we employed an N-terminomics approach called TAILS (Terminal amine isotopic labeling of substrates) to quantitatively compare the N-terminal peptides detected in parental and CAPN5-deficient SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells. Thirty neo-N-termini corresponding to 29 protein groups and 24 unique proteins were detected to be depleted in the CAPN5^-/- cells. A subset of the identified putative substrates was further studied with CAPN5 co-immunoprecipitation, in vitro calcium-induced CAPN5 proteolysis assay, and their cellular fragmentation patterns were compared in parental and CAPN5-deficient SH-SY5Y cells. Here, we provide evidence for CAPN5-mediated proteolysis of the synaptic proteins DLGAP4, IQSEC1 and MPDZ, the neurodegeneration-related EWS, hnRNPU, TFG and UGP2, the DNA replication regulator MCM3, and the neuronal differentiation regulator LMTK1. Our data provide new relevance for neovascular inflammatory vitreoretinopathy (NIV), a progressive eye disease caused by pathogenic mutations in CAPN5. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD064313.