We report an over-all method to examine the acknowledgement of post-translational modifications (PTMs) by antibodies and proteins. quick and inexpensive assessment of chromatin-associating element binding specificity. Results and Conversation Post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins such as phosphorylation methylation acetylation and ubiquitination regulate many processes such as protein degradation protein trafficking and mediation of protein-protein relationships[1]. Perhaps the best-studied PTMs are those found associated with histone proteins. More than one hundred histone PTMs have been described and they mainly function by recruiting protein factors to chromatin which in turn drive processes such as transcription replication and DNA restoration[2]. Likewise dozens of chromatin-associating factors have been recognized that bind to particular histone PTMs and hundreds of modification-specific histone antibodies have been developed to understand the function of these modifications[3]. The enormous quantity of potential mixtures of histone PTMs signifies a major obstacle toward our understanding of how PTMs regulate chromatin-templated processes as well as our ability to develop high-quality diagnostic tools for chromatin and epigenetic studies. The same obstacle applies to additional proteins controlled by combinatorial PTMs – for example p53 RNA polymerase or nuclear receptors[4-6]. To that end we developed a peptide array-based platform to begin to address how both proteins and antibodies identify mixtures of PTMs. We focused primarily within the acknowledgement of PTMs associated with the N-terminal tail of histone H3 but this approach is useful for the MLN8237 study of additional histone modifications and combinatorial PTMs found on additional proteins. We generated a library of 110 synthetic histone peptides bearing either solitary or combinatorial PTMs and a biotin moiety for immobilization (Number 1 and Table S2). Prior to printing all peptides were subjected to demanding quality control to verify their accuracy (observe http://www.med.unc.edu/~bstrahl/Arrays/index.htm for complete details). This is significant as considerable peptide purification and mass spectrometric analysis is not possible with additional recently explained array technologies used to study combinatorial histone PTMs[7]. Another significant advancement in our method was the intro of a biotinylated fluorescent tracer molecule which served like a positive control for the quality of our printing in all experiments. Lastly peptides were printed as a series of 6 spots two times per slip by two different pins yielding 24 self-employed measurements of every binding connection per slip. These actions were used MLN8237 to minimize binding artifacts due to pin variance or inconsistencies on slip surface. Therefore these arrays and the technical approaches explained herein are the first to offer a large number of extensively characterized histone peptide substrates suitable for the assessment of protein or antibody binding. Number 1 Composition of MLN8237 histone peptide arrays. (A) Peptides synthesized for this study with possible sidechain modifications (in single or combinatorial fashion) are indicated for each amino acid. (B) Depiction of array surface. Streptavidin-coated glass slides … We initially used our arrays to ask two fundamental questions regarding the recognition of histone PTMs: 1) How well do modification-directed antibodies recognize their intended epitope? and 2) what impact if any do IL13 antibody combinatorial PTMs have on antibody recognition? We tested more than 20 commercially available antibodies raised against individual modifications on histone tails (see Table S4 and http://www.med.unc.edu/~bstrahl/Arrays/index.htm for experimental conditions and complete datasets). Generally we found that antibodies were reasonably proficient at recognizing their target modification (Figure S3) however we found several exceptions – notably the discrimination between different methyllysine states by methyl-specific antibodies and the recognition of histone H3 lysine 14 acetylation (H3K14ac). To explore methyllysine recognition we tested the specificity of commercial antibodies raised against the three different methylated forms (mono- di- and.