digestion, the peptide was desalted by the Strata X C18 solid-phase
extraction column (Phenomenex, USA) and vacuum-dried. Peptides were
reconstituted in 0.5 M TEAB and processed in accordance with the manufacturer’s
protocol for the TMT kit/iTRAQ kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). The
peptide mixtures were then incubated for 2 h at room temperature and
pooled, desalted, and dried by vacuum centrifugation.
The tryptic
peptides were fractionated into fractions by high pH reverse-phase
high-performance liquid chromatography using the Thermo Betasil C18
column (5 μm particles, 10 mm ID, 250 mm length). Briefly, peptides
were first separated with a gradient of 8–32% acetonitrile
(pH 9.0) over 60 min into 60 fractions. Then, the peptides were combined
into eight fractions and dried by vacuum centrifuging.
For the
enrichment of the modified peptides, tryptic peptides were dissolved
in NETN buffer (containing 100 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 50 mM Tris-HCl,
and 0.5% NP-40; pH 8.0) and then incubated with prewashed antibody
beads (lot number 001, PTM Bio) at 4 °C overnight with gentle
shaking. Then, we washed the beads four times using NETN buffer and
twice using H2O. The bound peptides were eluted from the
beads with 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid. For LC–MS/MS analysis,
the resulting peptides were desalted with C18 ZipTips (Millipore)
according to the manufacturer’s instructions.