High-throughput quantitative analysis of protein conformational
changes has a profound impact on our understanding of the pathological
mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). To establish an effective
workflow enabling quantitative analysis of changes in protein conformation
within multiple samples simultaneously, here we report the combination
of N,N-dimethyl leucine (DiLeu) isobaric tag labeling
with limited proteolysis mass spectrometry (DiLeu-LiP-MS) for high-throughput
structural protein quantitation in serum samples collected from AD
patients and control donors. Twenty-three proteins were discovered
to undergo structural changes, mapping to 35 unique conformotypic
peptides with significant changes between the AD group and the control
group. Seven out of 23 proteins, including CO3, CO9, C4BPA, APOA1,
APOA4, C1R, and APOA, exhibited a potential correlation with AD. Moreover,
we found that complement proteins (e.g., CO3, CO9, and C4BPA) related
to AD exhibited elevated levels in the AD group compared to those
in the control group. These results provide evidence that the established
DiLeu-LiP-MS method can be used for high-throughput structural protein
quantitation, which also showed great potential in achieving large-scale
and in-depth quantitative analysis of protein conformational changes
in other biological systems.