Effects of Guanidination with Trypsin, Lys-C, or Glu-C Digestion on Mass Spectrometric Signal Intensity and Protein Sequence Coverage

The conventional peptide modification process of guanidination, in which the amino groups of lysine residues are converted to guanidino groups using O-methylisourea to create more basic homoarginine residues, is often used to improve the signal intensity of lysine-containing peptides in matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS). Here, we used three different protease enzymes (trypsin, Lys-C, and Glu-C) to evaluate the effects of guanidination on the MS signals of two enzymatically digested proteins. Horse heart myoglobin and bovine serum albumin were guanidinated either before or after digestion with trypsin, Lys-C, or Glu-C. The resulting peptides were subjected to MALDI-MS, and signal intensities and sequence coverage were systematically evaluated for each digest. Guanidination prior to Glu-C digestion improved sequence coverage for both proteins. For myoglobin, guanidination before enzymatic digestion with trypsin or Lys-C also enhanced sequence coverage, but guanidination after enzymatic digestion enhanced sequence coverage only with Lys-C. For albumin, guanidination either before or after Glu-C digestion increased sequence coverage, whereas pre- or post-digestion guanidination decreased sequence coverage with trypsin and Lys-C. The amino acid composition of a protein appears to be the major factor determining whether guanidination will enhance its MALDI-MS sequence coverage.