Comprehensive evaluation of cleavable bioorthogonal probes for site-specific O-GlcNAc proteomics

O-linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification (i.e., O-GlcNAcylation) on proteins is an essential modification in physiology and pathology. Although O-GlcNAcylation is functionally critical, its analysis has been challenging. Despite the existence of a number of methods developed in the past years, which one(s) might have the best performance is largely unclear. To that end, we conducted a rigorous comparison of several cleavable bioorthogonal biotin-alkyne probes which showed promise for sensitive O-GlcNAc proteomics. In brief, we developed chemoenzymatic labeling/click chemistry-based analytical workflows for O-GlcNAc proteomics, by utilizing four cleavable bioorthogonal probes including photocleavabe-biotin-alkyne (PC-biotin-alkyne), dialkoxydiphenylsilane-biotin-alkyne (DADPS-biotin-alkyne); 1-(4,4-dimethyl-2,6-dioxocyclohex-1-ylidene)ethyl-biotin-alkyne (Dde-biotin-alkyne), and diazobenzene-biotin-alkyne (Diazo-biotin-alkyne). The analytical performance of these probes was evaluated with synthetic O-GlcNAc peptides and then benchmarked by using mouse brain lysates for O-GlcNAc proteomics. Besides providing valuable technical insights into O-GlcNAc proteomics methods, our work yielded an unprecedented O-GlcNAc proteome depth in mouse brain. In total, 2,906 O-GlcNAc sites were unambiguously assigned on 878 proteins. Among them, 1,611 sites were newly identified, including 138 O-GlcNAcylated tyrosine residues. Our work will help guide selection/development of O-GlcNAc proteomics methods for future studies, provide an invaluable resource for functional elucidation of protein O-GlcNAcylation in brain biology, and yield critical insights into tyrosine O-GlcNAcylation.