Quantifying Protection in Disordered Proteins Using Millisecond Hydrogen Exchange-Mass Spectrometry and Peptic Reference Peptides

The extent and location of transient structure in intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) provide valuable insights into their conformational ensembles and can lead to a better understanding of coupled binding and folding. Millisecond amide hydrogen exchange (HX) can provide such information, but it is difficult to quantify the degree of transient structuring. One reason is that transiently disordered proteins undergo HX at rates only slightly slower than the rate of amide HX by an unstructured random coil, the chemical HX rate. In this work, we evaluate several different methods of obtaining an accurate model for the chemical HX rate suitable for millisecond hydrogen exchange mass spectrometry (HX-MS) analysis of disordered proteins: (1) calculations using the method of Englander [Bai, Y., et al. (1993) <i>Proteins</i> <i>17</i>, 75–86], (2) measurement of HX in the presence of 6 M urea or 3 M guanidinium chloride, and (3) measurement of HX by peptide fragments derived directly from the proteins of interest. First, using unstructured model peptides and disordered domains of the activator for thyroid and retinoid receptors and the CREB binding protein as the model IDPs, we show that the Englander method has slight inaccuracies that lead to underestimation of the chemical exchange rate. Second, HX-MS measurements of model peptides show that HX rates are changed dramatically by high concentrations of the denaturant. Third, we find that measurements of HX by reference peptides from the proteins of interest provide the most accurate approach for quantifying the extent of transient structure in disordered proteins by millisecond HX-MS

Interlaboratory Comparison of Hydrogen-Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry Measurements of the Fab fragment of NISTmAb

Hydrogen–deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) is an established, powerful tool for investigating protein–ligand interactions, protein folding, and protein dynamics. However, HDX-MS is still an emergent tool for quality control of biopharmaceuticals and for establishing dynamic similarity between a biosimilar and an innovator therapeutic. Because industry will conduct quality control and similarity measurements over a product lifetime and in multiple locations, an understanding of HDX-MS reproducibility is critical. To determine the reproducibility of continuous-labeling, bottom-up HDX-MS measurements, the present interlaboratory comparison project evaluated deuterium uptake data from the Fab fragment of NISTmAb reference material (PDB: 5K8A) from 15 laboratories. Laboratories reported ∼89 800 centroid measurements for 430 proteolytic peptide sequences of the Fab fragment (∼78 900 centroids), giving ∼100% coverage, and ∼10 900 centroid measurements for 77 peptide sequences of the Fc fragment. Nearly half of peptide sequences are unique to the reporting laboratory, and only two sequences are reported by all laboratories. The majority of the laboratories (87%) exhibited centroid mass laboratory repeatability precisions of ⟨sLab⟩ ≤ (0.15 ± 0.01) Da (1σx̅). All laboratories achieved ⟨sLab⟩ ≤ 0.4 Da. For immersions of protein at THDX = (3.6 to 25) °C and for D2O exchange times of tHDX = (30 s to 4 h) the reproducibility of back-exchange corrected, deuterium uptake measurements for the 15 laboratories is σreproducibility15 Laboratories(tHDX) = (9.0 ± 0.9) % (1σ). A nine laboratory cohort that immersed samples at THDX = 25 °C exhibited reproducibility of σreproducibility25C cohort(tHDX) = (6.5 ± 0.6) % for back-exchange corrected, deuterium uptake measurements