Covalent inhibitors have recently seen a
resurgence of interest in drug development. Nevertheless, compounds, that do
not rely on an enzymatic activity, have almost exclusively been developed to
target cysteines. Expanding the scope to other amino acids would be largely
facilitated by the ability to globally monitor their engagement by covalent
inhibitors. Here, we present the use of light-activatable 2,5-disubstituted
tetrazoles that allow quantifying 8971 aspartates and glutamates in the
bacterial proteome with excellent selectivity. Using these probes, we
competitively map the binding sites of two isoxazolium salts and introduce
hydrazonyl chlorides as a new class of carboxylic acid-directed covalent
protein ligands. As the probes are unreactive prior to activation, they allow global
profiling even in living Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Taken
together, this method to monitor aspartates and glutamates proteome-wide will
lay the foundation to efficiently develop covalent inhibitors targeting these
amino acids