New Quantitative Mass Spectrometry Approaches Reveal Different ADP-ribosylation Phases Dependent On the Levels of Oxidative Stress*

Vera Bilan, Nathalie Selevsek, Hans A V Kistemaker, Jeannette Abplanalp, Roxane Feurer, Dmitri V Filippov, Michael O Hottiger

Oxidative stress is a potent inducer of protein ADP-ribosylation. Although individual oxidative stress-induced ADP-ribosylated proteins have been identified, it is so far not clear, to which extent different degrees of stress severity quantitatively and qualitatively alter ADP-ribosylation, respectively. Here, we investigated both quantitative and qualitative changes of the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)-induced ADP-ribosylome using a label-free shotgun quantification and a parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) mass spectrometry approach for a selected number of identified ADP-ribosylated peptides. While the major part of the basal HeLa ADP-ribosylome remained unchanged upon all tested H2O2 concentrations, some selected peptides change the extent of ADP-ribosylation depending on the degree of the applied oxidative stress. Low oxidative stress (i.e. 4 μM and 16 μM H2O2) caused a reduction in ADP-ribosylation of modified proteins detected under untreated conditions. In contrast, mid to strong oxidative stress (62 μM to 1mM H2O2) induced a significant increase in ADP-ribosylation of oxidative stress-targeted proteins. The application of the PRM approach to SKOV3 and A2780, ovarian cancer cells displaying different sensitivities to PARP inhibitors, revealed that the basal and the H2O2-induced ADP-ribosylomes of SKOV3 and A2780 differed significantly and that the sensitivity to PARP inhibitors correlated with the level of ARTD1 expression in these cells. Overall, this new PRM-MS approach has proven to be sensitive in monitoring alterations of the ADP-ribosylome and has revealed unexpected alterations in protein ADP-ribosylation depending on the degree of oxidative stress.