A peptide array for bovine-specific Kinome analysis : comparative analysis of bovine monocytes activated by TLR4 and TLR9 agonists
Date
2008
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
As phosphorylation represents the pivotal mechanism for regulation of biological processes, kinases belong to one of the most biologically significant enzyme classes. The development of analytical techniques for characterization of kinase activity, in particular at a global scale, is a central priority for proteomic and cell biology researchers. In order to facilitate global analysis of cellular phosphorylation, a new paradigm of microarray technology which focuses on analysis of total cellular kinase activity, kinome, has emerged in the past few years. As the specificity of many kinases is dictated primarily by recognition of residues immediately surrounding the site of phosphorylation a logical methodology is to employ peptides representing these immediate sequences as experimental substrates. Microarray chips carrying hundreds of such substrate targets have been developed for human kinome analysis, however, lack of similar tools for species outside research mainstream has limited kinome analysis in these species. Based on sequence alignment of orthologous phosphoproteins from mammalian species, conservation of amino acid identity is reported to be 80 %. Accordingly, the potential exists to utilize phosphorylation sequence databases to extrapolate phosphorylation sites in other species based on their genomic sequence information. Peptides representing these proposed phosphorylation sites can then be utilized as substrates to quantify the activity of the corresponding kinase. Based on these principles, a bovine microarray of 300 unique peptide targets was constructed. The bovine phosphorylation targets were selected to represent a spectrum of cellular events but with focus on processes related to innate immunity.
Initial application and validation of the bovine peptide arrays was carried out for kinome analysis of bovine blood monocytes stimulated with either lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or CpG-ODNs; ligands for Toll-like receptors (TLR) 4 and 9, respectively. The arrays confirmed activation of the known TLR signaling pathway as well as identifying receptor-specific phosphorylation events. Phosphorylation events not previously attributed to TLR activation were also identified and validated by independent bioassays. This investigation offers insight into the complexity of TLR signaling and more importantly verifies the potential to use bioinformatics approaches to create tools for species-specific kinome analysis based on genomic information.
Description
Keywords
peptide array, LPS, CpG, TLR4, TLR9
Citation
Degree
Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Department
Biochemistry
Program
Biochemistry