Beth Murray

PhosphoSitePlus(®) (PSP, http://www.phosphosite.org/), a knowledgebase dedicated to mammalian post-translational modifications (PTMs), contains over 330,000 non-redundant PTMs, including phospho, acetyl, ubiquityl and methyl groups. Over 95% of the sites are from mass spectrometry (MS) experiments. In order to improve data reliability, early MS data have been reanalyzed, applying a common standard of analysis across over 1,000,000 spectra. Site assignments with P > 0.05 were filtered out. Two new downloads are available from PSP. The 'Regulatory sites' dataset includes curated information about modification sites that regulate downstream cellular processes, molecular functions and protein-protein interactions. The 'PTMVar' dataset, an intersect of missense mutations and PTMs from PSP, identifies over 25,000 PTMVars (PTMs Impacted by Variants) that can rewire signaling pathways. The PTMVar data include missense mutations from UniPROTKB, TCGA and other sources that cause over 2000 diseases or syndromes (MIM) and polymorphisms, or are associated with hundreds of cancers. PTMVars include 18 548 phosphorlyation sites, 3412 ubiquitylation sites, 2316 acetylation sites, 685 methylation sites and 245 succinylation sites.

For 15 years the mission of PhosphoSitePlus® (PSP, https://www.phosphosite.org) has been to provide comprehensive information and tools for the study of mammalian post-translational modifications (PTMs). The number of unique PTMs in PSP is now more than 450 000 from over 22 000 articles and thousands of MS datasets. The most important areas of growth in PSP are in disease and isoform informatics. Germline mutations associated with inherited diseases and somatic cancer mutations have been added to the database and can now be viewed along with PTMs and associated quantitative information on novel 'lollipop' plots. These plots enable researchers to interactively visualize the overlap between disease variants and PTMs, and to identify mutations that may alter phenotypes by rewiring signaling networks. We are expanding the sequence space to include over 30 000 human and mouse isoforms to enable researchers to explore the important but understudied biology of isoforms. This represents a necessary expansion of sequence space to accommodate the growing precision and depth of coverage enabled by ongoing advances in mass spectrometry. Isoforms are aligned using a new algorithm. Exploring the worlds of PTMs and disease mutations in the entire isoform space will hopefully lead to new biomarkers, therapeutic targets, and insights into isoform biology.

Factor VIII (fVIII) functions in the intrinsic pathway of coagulation as the cofactor for Factor IXa proteolytic activation of Factor X. fVIII contains multiple sites which are susceptible to cleavage by thrombin, Factor Xa, and activate) protein C. Proteolytic cleavage is required for cofactor activity and may be responsible for inactivation of cofactor activity. In order to identify the role ofthe individual cleavages of fVIII in its activation and inactivation, site-directed DNA mediated mutagenesis of fVIII was performed and the altered forms of fVIII produced and characterized. Conversionof Arg residues to lie residues at amino acid positions 740, 1648, and 1721 resulted in resistance to thrombin cleavage at those siteswith no alteration of in vitro procoagulant activity. Modification of the thrombin cleavage sites at either positions 372 or 1689 resulted in loss of cofactor activity suggesting that these sites are important for activation. Modification of the postulated activated protein C cleavage site at position 336 resulted in fVIII with a higher specific activity than wild type, possibly due to resistance toproteolytic inactivation. DNA mediated mutagenesis was also used to study the role of post-translational biosynthetic modifications of fVIII. Structural characterization of recombinant fVIII suggested the presence of sulfated tyrosine residues within two acidic regions located between amino acid residues 336-372 and 1648-1689. Individual modification of theseTyr residues to Phe had negligible effect on synthesis and in vitrocofactor activity. The effect of combinations of these mutations onsecretion, cofactor activity, and vWF interaction will be presented.