PNNL

Abstract

Chemical cross-linking combined with mass spectrometry provides a powerful method for identifying protein-protein interactions and probing the structure of protein complexes. Cross-linking is the process of covalently joining two proteins using cross-linking reagents. After proteolytic cleavage, the cross-linked peptides can be identified using tandem mass spectrometry. A number of strategies have been reported that take advantage of the high sensitivity and high resolution of modern mass spectrometers. Approaches typically include synthesis of novel cross-linking compounds and/or isotopic labelling of the cross-linkering reagent and/or protein to aid both identification and quantitation. However, these approaches have various limitations. These limitations can be overcome with a label-free approach and application of associated data analysis algorithms described in this work.