Cysteine residues are known to perform essential functions within proteins, including binding to various metal ions. In particular, cysteine residues can display high affinity toward zinc ions (Zn2+), and these resulting Zn2+-cysteine complexes are critical mediators of protein structure, catalysis and regulation. Recent advances in both experimental and theoretical platforms have accelerated the identification and functional characterization of Zn2+-bound cysteines. Zn2+-cysteine complexes have been observed across diverse protein classes and are known to facilitate a variety of cellular processes. Here, we highlight the structural characteristics and diverse functional roles of Zn2+-cysteine complexes in proteins and describe structural, computational and chemical proteomic technologies that have enabled the global discovery of novel Zn2+-binding cysteines.

Cysteine residues on proteins play key roles in catalysis and regulation. These functional cysteines serve as active sites for nucleophilic and redox catalysis, sites of allosteric regulation, and metal-binding ligands on proteins from diverse classes including proteases, kinases, metabolic enzymes, and transcription factors. In this review, we focus on a few select examples that serve to highlight the multiple functions performed by cysteines, with an emphasis on cysteine-mediated protein activities implicated in cancer. The enhanced reactivity of functional cysteines renders them susceptible to modification by electrophilic species. Toward this end, we discuss recent advancements and future prospects for utilizing cysteine-reactive small molecules as drugs and imaging agents for the treatment and diagnosis of cancer.

Small-molecule inhibitors can accelerate the functional annotation and validate the therapeutic potential of proteins implicated in disease. Phenotypic screens provide an effective platform to identify such pharmacological agents but are often hindered by challenges associated with target identification. For many protein targets, these bottlenecks can be overcome by incorporating electrophiles into small molecules to covalently trap interactions in vivo and by employing bioorthogonal handles to enrich the protein targets directly from a complex proteome. Here we present the trifunctionalized 1,3,5-triazine as an ideal modular scaffold for generating libraries of irreversible inhibitors with diverse target specificities. A divergent synthetic scheme was developed to derivatize the triazine with an electrophile for covalent modification of target proteins, an alkyne as a click-chemistry handle for target identification, and a diversity element to direct the compounds toward distinct subsets of the proteome. We specifically targeted our initial library toward cysteine-mediated protein activities through incorporation of thiol-specific electrophiles. From this initial screen we identified two compounds, RB-2-cb and RB-11-ca, which are cell permeable and highly selective covalent modifiers for Cys239 of β-tubulin (TUBB) and Cys53 of protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) respectively. These compounds demonstrate in vitro and cellular potencies that are comparable to currently available modulators of tubulin polymerization and PDI activity. Our studies demonstrate the versatility of the triazine as a modular scaffold to generate potent and selective covalent modifiers of diverse protein families for chemical genetics applications.

Zinc ions (Zn(2+)) play vital catalytic, structural, and regulatory roles in protein function and are commonly chelated to cysteine residues within the protein framework. Current methods to identify Zn(2+)-binding cysteines rely on computational studies based on known Zn(2+)-chelating motifs, as well as high-resolution structural data. These available approaches preclude the global identification of putative Zn(2+)-chelating cysteines, particularly on poorly characterized proteins in the proteome. Herein, we describe an experimental platform that identifies metal-binding cysteines on the basis of their reduced nucleophilicity upon treatment with metal ions. As validation of our platform, we utilize a peptide-based cysteine-reactive probe to show that the known Zn(2+)-chelating cysteine in sorbitol dehydrogenase (SORD) demonstrates an expected loss in nucleophilicity in the presence of Zn(2+) ions and a gain in nucleophilicity upon treatment with a Zn(2+) chelator. We also identified the active-site cysteine in glutathione S-transferase omega-1 (GSTO1) as a potential Zn(2+)-chelation site, albeit with lower metal affinity relative to SORD. Treatment of recombinant GSTO1 with Zn(2+) ions results in a dose-dependent decrease in GSTO1 activity. Furthermore, we apply a promiscuous cysteine-reactive probe to globally identify putative Zn(2+)-binding cysteines across ∼900 cysteines in the human proteome. This proteomic study identified several well-characterized Zn(2+)-binding proteins, as well as numerous uncharacterized proteins from functionally distinct classes. This platform is highly versatile and provides an experimental tool that complements existing computational and structural methods to identify metal-binding cysteine residues.

Putting a number on it: Cleavable linkers are widely utilized in proteomics applications. In particular, the azobenzene-based linker cleaves under mild conditions that are mass-spectrometry-compatible. Here, we adapt this linker for quantitative proteomic applications by incorporating an isotopic label. These light- and heavy-tagged linkers enable the identification and quantitation of labeled peptides from multiple proteomes.