The development of selective histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors with anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties remains challenging in large part owing to the difficulty of probing the interaction of small molecules with megadalton protein complexes. A combination of affinity capture and quantitative mass spectrometry revealed the selectivity with which 16 HDAC inhibitors target multiple HDAC complexes scaffolded by ELM-SANT domain subunits, including a novel mitotic deacetylase complex (MiDAC). Inhibitors clustered according to their target profiles with stronger binding of aminobenzamides to the HDAC NCoR complex than to the HDAC Sin3 complex. We identified several non-HDAC targets for hydroxamate inhibitors. HDAC inhibitors with distinct profiles have correspondingly different effects on downstream targets. We also identified the anti-inflammatory drug bufexamac as a class IIb (HDAC6, HDAC10) HDAC inhibitor. Our approach enables the discovery of novel targets and inhibitors and suggests that the selectivity of HDAC inhibitors should be evaluated in the context of HDAC complexes and not purified catalytic subunits.

A better understanding of proteostasis in health and disease requires robust methods to determine protein half-lives. Here we improve the precision and accuracy of peptide ion intensity-based quantification, enabling more accurate protein turnover determination in non-dividing cells by dynamic SILAC-based proteomics. This approach allows exact determination of protein half-lives ranging from 10 to >1000 h. We identified 4000–6000 proteins in several non-dividing cell types, corresponding to 9699 unique protein identifications over the entire data set. We observed similar protein half-lives in B-cells, natural killer cells and monocytes, whereas hepatocytes and mouse embryonic neurons show substantial differences. Our data set extends and statistically validates the previous observation that subunits of protein complexes tend to have coherent turnover. Moreover, analysis of different proteasome and nuclear pore complex assemblies suggests that their turnover rate is architecture dependent. These results illustrate that our approach allows investigating protein turnover and its implications in various cell types.

Isobaric mass tagging (e.g., TMT and iTRAQ) is a precise and sensitive multiplexed peptide/protein quantification technique in mass spectrometry. However, accurate quantification of complex proteomic samples is impaired by cofragmentation of peptides, leading to systematic underestimation of quantitative ratios. Label-free quantification strategies do not suffer from such an accuracy bias but cannot be multiplexed and are less precise. Here, we compared protein quantification results obtained with these methods for a chemoproteomic competition binding experiment and evaluated the utility of measures of spectrum purity in survey spectra for estimating the impact of cofragmentation on measured TMT-ratios. While applying stringent interference filters enables substantially more accurate TMT quantification, this came at the expense of 30%-60% fewer proteins quantified. We devised an algorithm that corrects experimental TMT ratios on the basis of determined peptide interference levels. The quantification accuracy achieved with this correction was comparable to that obtained with stringent spectrum filters but limited the loss in coverage to <10%. The generic applicability of the fold change correction algorithm was further demonstrated by spiking of chemoproteomics samples into excess amounts of E. coli tryptic digests.

We describe a two-dimensional thermal proteome profiling strategy that can be combined with an orthogonal chemoproteomics approach to enable comprehensive target profiling of the marketed histone deacetylase inhibitor panobinostat. The N-hydroxycinnamide moiety is identified as critical for potent and tetrahydrobiopterin-competitive inhibition of phenylalanine hydroxylase leading to increases in phenylalanine and decreases in tyrosine levels. These findings provide a rationale for adverse clinical observations and suggest repurposing of the drug for treatment of tyrosinemia.

SummaryQuantitative mass spectrometry has established proteome-wide regulation of protein abundance and post-translational modifications in various biological processes. Here, we used quantitative mass spectrometry to systematically analyze the thermal stability and solubility of proteins on a proteome-wide scale during the eukaryotic cell cycle. We demonstrate pervasive variation of these biophysical parameters with most changes occurring in mitosis and G1. Various cellular pathways and components vary in thermal stability, such as cell-cycle factors, polymerases, and chromatin remodelers. We demonstrate that protein thermal stability serves as a proxy for enzyme activity, DNA binding, and complex formation in situ. Strikingly, a large cohort of intrinsically disordered and mitotically phosphorylated proteins is stabilized and solubilized in mitosis, suggesting a fundamental remodeling of the biophysical environment of the mitotic cell. Our data represent a rich resource for cell, structural, and systems biologists interested in proteome regulation during biological transitions.