Strategy for Identification of Phosphorylation Levels of Low Abundance Proteins in Vivo for Which Antibodies Are not Available

Protein function is mainly modulated by dynamic reversible or irreversible post-translational modifications. Among them, the identification of protein phosphorylation sites and changes in phosphorylation levels in vivo are of considerable interest for a better understanding of the protein function. Thus, effective strategies for the quantitative determination of phosphorylation degrees for low abundant proteins, for which antibodies are not available, are required in order to evaluate the functional regulation of proteins attributed to phosphorylation. In this study, we used the heart β1-adrenergic receptor (Adrb1) as a model protein and developed FLAG-Adrb1 knock-in mice, in which the FLAG tag was inserted at the N-terminus of Adrb1. The phosphorylation sites and levels of Adrb1 in the heart were elucidated by immuno-affinity purification followed by quantitative mass spectrometry analysis using ion intensity ratio of the phosphorylated peptide versus corresponding unphosphorylated peptide. The phosphorylation levels at Ser274 and Ser462 of Adrb1 were approximately 0.25 and 0.0023. This effective strategy should be useful for not only analyzing site-specific phosphorylation levels of target proteins, but also quantifying the expression levels of proteins of interest when appropriate antibodies are not available.