Protein surface topology-probing by selective chemical modification and mass spectrometric peptide mapping.

Aminoacetylation of lysine residues and the modification of arginine by 1,2-cyclohexanedione to N7,N8-(dihydroxy-1,2-cyclohexylidene)arginine were used for probing the surface topology of hen-eggwhite lysozyme as a model protein. The molecular identification of lysine and arginine modification sites was provided by molecular weight determinations of modified and unmodified tryptic peptide mixtures (peptide mapping) using 252Cf plasma desorption mass spectrometry. At conditions of limited chemical modification, mass-spectrometric peptide-mapping analyses of lysozyme derivatives enabled the direct assignment of relative reactivities of lysine and arginine residues at different reaction times and reagent concentrations. The relative reactivities of lysine residues showed a direct correlation with their surface accessibilities from x-ray structure data. For the reaction with 1,2-cyclohexanedione, a selective modification at Arg-5, -125, -112, and -73 was identified, and an inverse correlation of relative reactivities with the surface accessibility ratios of the N7- and the N8-guanidino functions was obtained. By examination of the x-ray structural data of lysozyme, this selective modification was attributed to intramolecular catalysis because of the presence of neighboring proton acceptor groups, such as the Asp-119 carboxylate group for Arg-125 and the Trp-123 and Arg-125 carbonyl groups for Arg-5.