Preparation of monodisperse immobilized Ti4+ affinity chromatography microspheres for specific enrichment of phosphopeptides

This study presented an approach to prepare monodisperse immobilized Ti4+ affinity chromatography (Ti4+-IMAC) microspheres for specific enrichment of phosphopeptides in phosphoproteome analysis. Monodisperse polystyrene seed microspheres with a diameter of ca. 4.8 mu m were first prepared by a dispersion polymerization method. Monodisperse microspheres with a diameter of ca. 13 mu m were prepared using the seed microspheres by a single-step swelling and polymerization method. Ti4+ ion was immobilized after chemical modification of the microspheres with phosphonate groups. The specificity of the Ti4+-IMAC microspheres to phosphopeptides was demonstrated by selective enrichment of phosphopeptides from Mixture of tryptic digests of alpha-casein and bovine serum albumin (BSA) at molar ratio of 1 to 500 by MALDI-TOF MS analysis. The sensitivity of detection for phosphopeptides determined by MALDI-TOF MS was as low as 5 fmol for standard tryptic digest of beta-casein. The Ti4+-IMAC microspheres were compared with commercial Fe3+-IMAC adsorbent and homemade Zr4+-IMAC microspheres for enrichment of phosphopeptides. The phosphopeptides and non-phosphopeptides identified by Fe3+-IMAC, Zr4+-IMAC and Ti4+-IMAC methods were 26,114,127 and 181,11,11 respectively for the same tryptic digest samples. The results indicated that the Ti4+-IMAC had the best performance for enrichment of phosphopepticles. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.