Identification of a chloroform-soluble membrane miniprotein in Escherichia coli and its homolog in Salmonella typhimurium

Two homologous 29 amino acid-long highly hydrophobic membrane miniproteins were identified in the Bligh–Dyer lipid extracts of Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium using liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS). The amino acid sequences of the proteins were determined by collision-induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry, in conjunction with a translating BLAST (tBLASTn) search, i.e., comparing the MS/MS-determined protein query sequence against the six-frame translations of the nucleotide sequences of the E. coli and S. typhimurium genomes. Further MS characterization revealed that both proteins retain the N-terminal initiating formyl-methionines. The methodologies described here may be amendable for detecting and characterizing small hydrophobic proteins in other organisms that are difficult to annotate or analyze by conventional methods.