Skip to main content
Log in

Determining protein kinase substrate specificity by parallel solution-phase assay of large numbers of peptide substrates

  • Protocol
  • Published:

From Nature Protocols

View current issue Submit your manuscript

Abstract

We describe here a protocol for determining the activity of protein kinases on a large set of peptide substrates. Biotin-tagged peptides are arrayed in multiwell plates and incubated in solution with the kinase of interest and radiolabeled ATP. Reactions are then spotted simultaneously onto a streptavidin membrane, which is washed, dried, and analyzed by autoradiography or phosphor imaging. Differences in the extent of radiolabel incorporation into the various peptide substrates provide a measure of the sequence specificity of the kinase. This approach is a faster, more sensitive, and more generally applicable method for determining kinase phosphorylation motifs than older peptide library screening approaches based on Edman sequencing. The procedure is readily adaptable to other applications that require parallel processing of many kinase reactions, such as screening for small molecule inhibitors. In the format described here, preparation of stock plates prior to running the reactions will require about 4 days. Afterwards, the protocol takes approximately 6 hours to perform.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Figure 1: Suggested peptide layout in reaction (top) and stock (bottom) plates.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Hutti, J. E. et al. A rapid method for determining protein kinase phosphorylation specificity. Nat. Meth. 1, 27–29 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Songyang, Z. et al. Use of an oriented peptide library to determine the optimal substrates of protein kinases. Curr. Biol. 4, 973–982 (1994).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Asensio, C. J. A. and Garcia, R. C. Determination of a large number of kinase activities using peptide substrates, P81 phosphocellulose paper arrays and phosphor imaging. Anal. Biochem. 319, 21–33 (2003).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Fujii, K. et al. Kinase peptide specificity: improved determination and relevance to protein phosphorylation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 13744–13749 (2004).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Rodriguez, M., Li, S.S., Harper, J.W. & Songyang, Z. An oriented peptide array library (OPAL) strategy to study protein-protein interactions. J. Biol. Chem. 279, 8802–8807 (2004).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Rychlewski, L. et al. Target specificity analysis of the Abl kinase using peptide microarray data. J. Mol. Biol. 336, 307–311 (2004).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Bantan-Polak, T. et al. A comparison of fluorescamine and naphthalene-2,3-dicarboxaldehyde fluorogenic reagents for microplate-based detection of amino acids. Anal. Biochem. 297, 128–136 (2001).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grant GM56203 (to L.C.C) and a fellowship from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (to B.E.T.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin E. Turk.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Turk, B., Hutti, J. & Cantley, L. Determining protein kinase substrate specificity by parallel solution-phase assay of large numbers of peptide substrates. Nat Protoc 1, 375–379 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2006.57

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2006.57

  • Springer Nature Limited

This article is cited by

Navigation