Profiling of generic anti-phosphopeptide antibodies and kinases with peptide microarrays using radioactive and fluorescence-based assays

Sören Panse, Liying Dong, Antje Burian, Robert Carus, Mike Schutkowski, Ulf Reimer, Jens Schneider-Mergener

Kinases represent one of the largest enzyme families and key regulatory proteins in the cell. Only a small subset of these enzymes has been characterised so far. We have prepared different types of phosphopeptide and peptide microarrays displaying peptides deduced from annotated human phosphorylation sites and cytoplasmic domains of all annotated human membrane proteins. This approach was enabled by fully-automated high throughput micro-scale synthesis of peptides by the SPOT technology combined with chemo-selective immobilisation on modified glass slides. The phosphopeptide microarrays displaying 2923 peptides in total have been used for the characterisation of commercially available generic anti-phosphopeptide antibodies. This enabled us to detect Abl kinase activity on a microarray with anti-phosphotyrosine antibodies yielding results comparable to those obtained from a radioactive assay. More than 13 000 peptides deposited on six glass slides were used to profile casein kinase 2 (CK2) using a radioactive assay, since no generic antibody for the reliable detection of serine or threonine phosphorylation could be identified. All previously identified substrates were detected in the microarray experiment. In order to confirm whether substrates on the microarray are substrates in solution phase assays, more than 700 peptides were synthesised and tested with CK2 in a solution phase assay. All substrates identified in the solution phase assay were also detected on the microarray.