Trypsin functionalization and zirconia coating of mesoporous silica nanotubes for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry analysis of phosphoprotein

• We developed a combined procedure for the fast and selective enrichment of phosphopeptides.
• TEMSN was used as a bioreactor for digestion of α-casein within 3 min.
• ZrO2-MSN possessed remarkable selectivity even at 100/1 molar ratio of BSA/β-casein.
• The detection limit was as low as 2.5 fmol.
• This analytical strategy got a comparable results in comparison to other materials cited from literature.

Trypsin functionalized mesoporous silica nanotubes bioreactor (TEMSN) and zirconia layer coated mesoporous silica nanotubes (ZrO2-MSN) were developed to deal with the long in-solution digestion time of phosphoprotein and detection difficulty of phosphorylated peptides, respectively. Trypsin was immobilized on the mesoporous silica nanotubes via epoxy group and TEMSN were used as a bioreactor for digestion of α-casein within 3 min. ZrO2-MSN were performed to enrich phosphopeptides selectively from in-solution digested peptide mixture of β-casein to demonstrate that ZrO2-MSN possessed remarkable selectivity for phosphorylated peptides even at 100/1 molar ratio of BSA/β-casein. The selective ability of ZrO2-MSN was also investigated in comparison to ZrO2 nanoparticles (ZrO2 NP). Moreover, phosphorylated peptides at the femtomole (2.5 fmol) level can also be detected with high S/N (signal-to-noise) ratio. Phosphopeptides enriched from TEMSN-bioreactor digested peptide mixture of α-casein was also performed to evaluate the cooperative performance of TEMSN and ZrO2-MSN platform. The experimental results indicated that TEMSN-bioreactor digestion changed the distribution of relative abundance of phosphopeptides and improved the relative intensity of partial phosphopeptides. This analytical strategy has also been applied to the identification of phosphopeptides isolated from non-fat bovine milk and got a comparable results compared with other materials cited from the literature. By matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), TEMSN and ZrO2-MSN were combined together for the rapid and comprehensive analysis of phosphoprotein.