Kyung Lock Kim1, Daehyung Kim2, Seongsil Lee3, Su-Jeong Kim1, Jung Eun Noh1, Joung-Hun Kim1, Young Chan Chae1, Jong-Bong Lee2,3 & Sung Ho Ryu1,3
1 Department of Life Sciences, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea. 2 Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea. 3 School of Interdisciplinary Bioscience and Bioengineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea.
Correspondence to : Sung Ho Ryu
Abstract
Post-translational modifications (PTMs) of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) at the plasma membrane (PM) determine the signal transduction efficacy alone and in combination. However, current approaches to identify PTMs provide ensemble results, inherently overlooking combinatorial PTMs in a single polypeptide molecule. Here, we describe a single-molecule blotting (SiMBlot) assay that combines biotinylation of cell surface receptors with single-molecule fluorescence microscopy. This method enables quantitative measurement of the phosphorylation status of individual membrane receptor molecules and colocalization analysis of multiple immunofluorescence signals to directly visualize pairwise site-specific phosphorylation patterns at the single-molecule level. Strikingly, application of SiMBlot to study ligand-dependent epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) phosphorylation, which is widely thought to be multi-phosphorylated, reveals that EGFR on cell membranes is hardly multi-phosphorylated, unlike in vitro autophosphorylated EGFR. Therefore, we expect SiMBlot to aid understanding of vast combinatorial PTM patterns, which are concealed in ensemble methods, and to broaden knowledge of RTK signaling.