• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.407-411
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• 2008

Phosphorylation plays the most important role in cell signaling mechanism. Various methods to identify the phosphorylation sites of proteins using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) have been reported recently. Furthermore, the enrichment strategy such as Titanium dioxide ($TiO_2$) method should be combined with MS/MS analysis to effectively identify phosphorylation sites. It is necessary to optimize phosphopeptide-enrichment strategy, $TiO_2$ method in this study, due to the low amount of phosphorylated form followed by analyzing them by MS/MS. To evaluate the several conditions to enrich phosphopeptides using $TiO_2$ method, we used ${\apha}$-casein as a standard phosphoprotein and analyzed a representative phosphopeptide (VPQLEIVPNpSAEER) peak of MS spectrum. Batch is better than column method for binding and 300 g/l DHB in loading buffer is better than lower concentration of DHB. 3% TFA and pH 10.5 shows high efficiency of phosphopeptide-enrichment for washing and elution steps, respectively. Finally we identified various efficient conditions of phosphopeptide-enrichment method using $TiO_2$. This optimized method would assist in reliable identifying thousands of phosphorylation sites existed in low abundance from various complex proteins.