The chiral proteomic analysis applied to aging collagens by LC-MS: Amino acid racemization, post-translational modifications, and sequence degradations during the aging process

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Collagen is the most abundant protein in the animal and human bodies, and it is not exempt from this aging phenomenon. Some age-related changes may appear on collagen sequences, such as increased surface hydrophobicity, the appearance of post-translational modifications, and amino acids racemization. This study has shown that the protein hydrolysis under deuterium conditions is privileged to limit the natural racemization during the hydrolysis. Indeed, under the deuterium condition, the homochirality of recent collagens is preserved whose amino acids are found in their L-form. However, in aging collagen, a natural amino acid racemization was observed. These results confirmed that the % D-amino acids are progressive according to age. The collagen sequence is degraded over time, and a fifth of the sequence information is lost during aging. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) in aging collagens can be a hypothesis to explain the modification of the hydrophobicity of the protein with the decrease of hydrophilic groups and the increase of hydrophobic groups. Finally, the exact positions of D-amino acids and PTMs have been correlated and elucidated.

Original languageEnglish
Article number341260
JournalAnalytica Chimica Acta
Volume1262
Number of pages10
ISSN0003-2670
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation , grant number 20-03899S .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier B.V.

    Research areas

  • Aging, Chiral separation, Collagen, D-amino acids, Liquid chromatography, Mass spectrometry

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