LC-MS/MS analysis of the dog serum phosphoproteome reveals novel and conserved phosphorylation sites: Phosphoprotein patterns in babesiosis caused by Babesia canis, a case study

Phosphorylation is the most commonly studied protein post-translational modification (PTM) in biological systems due to its importance in controlling cell division, survival, growth, etc. Despite the thorough research in phosphoproteomics of cells and tissues there is little information on circulating phosphoproteins. We compared serum from 10 healthy dogs and 10 dogs affected by B. canis-caused babesiosis with no organ dysfunctions by employing gel-free LC-MS/MS analysis of individual samples and tandem mass tag (TMT) label-based quantitative analyses of pools, both supported by phosphopeptide enrichment. Results showed a moderate number of phosphorylated proteins (50–55), with 89 phosphorylation sites not previously published for dogs although a number of them matched phosphorylation sites found in mammalian orthologs. Three phosphopeptides showed significant variation in babesiosis-affected dog sera compared to controls: Serum amyloid A (SAA) phosphorylated at serine 101 (up-regulation), kininogen 1 phosphorylated at threonine 326, and fibrinogen α phosphorylated at both threonine 20 and serine 22 (down-regulation). 71.9% of the detected phosphorylated sites were phosphoserine, 16.8% phosphothreonine and only 11.2% phosphotyrosine residues. TMT label-based quantitative analysis showed α-2-HS-glycoprotein / Fetuin A to be the most abundant phosphoprotein (50–70% of all phosphoproteins) followed by kininogen-1 (10–20%). The alterations of phosphorylated proteins observed in canine babesiosis caused by Babesia canis suggest new insights into the largely neglected role of extracellular protein phosphorylation in health and disease, encouraging urgent further research on this area. To the best of our knowledge the present study represents the first attempt to characterize canine serum phosphoproteome.