UC Irvine

Protein-protein interactions are essential for protein complex formation and function. Affinity purification coupled with mass spectrometry (AP-MS) is the method of choice for studying protein-protein interactions at the systems level under different physiological conditions. Although effective in capturing stable protein interactions, transient, weak, and/or dynamic interactors are often lost due to extended procedures during conventional AP-MS experiments. To circumvent this problem, we have recently developed XAP (in vivo cross-linking (X)-assisted affinity purification)-MS strategy to better preserve dynamic protein complexes under native lysis conditions. In addition, we have developed XBAP (in vivo cross-linking (X)-assisted bimolecular tandem affinity purification)-MS method by incorporating XAP with bimolecular affinity purification to define dynamic and heterogeneous protein subcomplexes. Here we describe general experimental protocols of XAP- and XBAP-MS to study dynamic protein complexes and their subcomplexes, respectively. Specifically, we present their applications in capturing and identifying proteasome dynamic interactors and ubiquitin receptor (UbR)-proteasome subcomplexes.