Synthesis of a Photolabeling Probe for the Study of Antiviral Mechanism of Ribavirin

Ribavirin has been used in urgency to treat SARS patients recently. In order to study its antiviral mechanism by photolabeling approach, we have synthesized and characterized 5-azido-1-β-D-ribofuranosyl-1,2,4-triazole-3-carboxiamide 1 as a photolabeling probe of ribavirin. The azidotriazole nucleoside showed rapid and clean photochemical reaction, suggesting that l is a promising probe to study the antiviral mechanism of ribarivin by photolabeling.

A new photolabeling probe for efficient enrichment and deep profiling of cell surface membrane proteome by mass spectrometry

The cell surface membrane proteome is a class of proteins encoded by ~25% of all protein-coding genes in living organisms and plays a key role in mediating communication between the cells and their surrounding environment. However, most cell surface membrane proteins(CSMPs) are naturally expressed at very low levels compared with intracellular proteins. The difficulties in their purification with high specificity further hinder the understanding of their structure and function. In this study, we developed a new photolabeling probe to achieve efficient tagging and facile enrichment of the CSMPs. The probe is composed of a lipid tail for cell surface localization, a polyethylene glycol(PEG) spacer for increased water solubility, two 4-(N-maleimido)benzophenone(MBP) groups for UV-active tagging of the CSMPs, and a biotin tag for subsequent isolation. Application of this photolabeling probe resulted in the successful enrichment and identification of 3098 annotated CSMPs in HT22 cells with close to 70% selectivity. The proposed photolabeling probe and enrichment strategy were demonstrated to be a powerful method for deep cell surface proteome profiling, representing one of the largest groups of current drug targets.

Glucose transporter 4 can be inserted in the membrane without exposing its catalytic site for photolabeling from the medium

Insulin stimulates the production of PI(3,4,5)P3 in muscle cells, and this is required to stimulate GLUT4 fusion with the plasma membrane. Introduction of exogenous PI(3,4,5)P3 to muscle cells recapitulates insulin's effects on GLUT4 fusion with the plasma membrane, but not glucose uptake. This study aims to explore the mechanism behind this difference. In L6-GLUT4myc muscle cells, the availability of the GLUT4 intracellular C-terminus and extracellular myc epitopes for immunoreactivity on plasma membrane lawns was detected with the corresponding antibody. The availability of the active site of GLUT4 from extracellular medium was assessed by affinity photolabeling with the cell impermeant compound Bio-LC-ATB-BMPA. 100nmol/L insulin and 10μmol/L PI(3,4,5)P3 caused myc signal gain on the plasma membrane lawns by 1.64-fold and 1.58-fold over basal, respectively. Insulin, but not PI(3,4,5)P3, increased photolabeling of GLUT4 and immunolabeling with C-terminus antibody by 2.47-fold and 2.04-fold over basal, respectively. Upon insulin stimulation, the C-terminus signal gain was greater than myc signal gain (2.04-fold vs. 1.64-fold over basal, respectively) in plasma membrane lawns. These results indicate that (i) PI(3,4,5)P3 does not make the active site of GLUT4 available from the extracellular surface despite causing GLUT4 fusion with the plasma membrane; (ii) the availability of the active site of GLUT4 from the extracellular medium and availability of the C-terminus from the cytosolic site are correlated; (iii) in addition to stimulating GLUT4 translocation, insulin stimulation displaces a protein which masks the GLUT4 C-terminus. We propose that a protein which masks the C-terminus also prevents the active site from being available for photolabelling and possibly glucose uptake after treatment with PI(3,4,5)P3.

Synthesis of Photoactivatable Phospholipidic Probes

We synthesized and characterized photoactivatable phospholipidic probes 1-3. These probes have the perfluorinated aryl azide function at the polar head of phospholipid. They are stable in dark and become highly reactive upon photoirradiation. The preliminary results suggest that they are promising tools to study the topology of membrane proteins and protein-lipid interactions using photolabeling approach.