Tandem affinity strategies reach exceptional protein purification grades and have considerably improved the outcome of mass spectrometry-based proteomic experiments. However, current tandem affinity tags are incompatible with two-step purification under fully denaturing conditions. Such stringent purification conditions are desirable for mass spectrometric analyses of protein modifications as they result in maximal preservation of posttranslational modifications. Here we describe the histidine-biotin (HB) tag, a new tandem affinity tag for twostep purification under denaturing conditions. The HB tag consists of a hexahistidine tag and a bacterially derived in vivo biotinylation signal peptide that induces efficient biotin attachment to the HB tag in yeast and mammalian cells. HB-tagged proteins can be sequentially purified under fully denaturing conditions, such as 8 M urea, by Ni 2؉ chelate chromatography and binding to streptavidin resins. The stringent separation conditions compatible with the HB tag prevent loss of protein modifications, and the high purification grade achieved by the tandem affinity strategy facilitates mass spectrometric analysis of posttranslational modifications. Ubiquitination is a particularly sensitive protein modification that is rapidly lost during purification under native conditions due to ubiquitin hydrolase activity. The HB tag is ideal to study ubiquitination because the denaturing conditions inhibit hydrolase activity, and the tandem affinity strategy greatly reduces nonspecific background. We tested the HB tag in proteome-wide ubiquitin profiling experiments in yeast and identified a number of known ubiquitinated proteins as well as so far unidentified candidate ubiquitination targets. In addition, the stringent purification conditions compatible with the HB tag allow effective mass spectrometric identification of in vivo cross-linked protein com- Mass spectrometric analysis of proteins has tremendously contributed to our understanding of biological systems. Mapping of covalent protein modifications by mass spectrometric approaches has made it possible to identify and rapidly evaluate the biological significance of modifications. In addition, identification of protein complexes by mass spectrometry has allowed investigators to connect cellular pathways and to describe the dynamics of protein complexes (1, 2). These approaches typically require a high degree of purification of proteins or protein complexes. Importantly to get a genuine picture of the in vivo situation it is essential to avoid any changes in protein modification or protein complex composition that might occur during the purification procedure. Two-step purification strategies have been proven to be very effective in reducing nonspecific background, which is particularly important for the analyses of complex protein samples (3). The first widely and successfully used tandem affinity tag was the TAP 1 tag, which consists of the immunoglobulin-interacting domain of Protein A and a calmodulinbinding peptide (CBP) a...