title: Crosslinking and Mass Spectrometry: An Integrated Technology to Understand the Structure and Function of Molecular Machines.
abstract: In recent years, chemical crosslinking of protein complexes and the identification of crosslinked residues by mass spectrometry (XL-MS; sometimes abbreviated as CX-MS) has become an important technique bridging mass spectrometry (MS) and structural biology. By now, XL-MS is well established and supported by publicly available resources as a convenient and versatile part of the structural biologist's toolbox. The combination of XL-MS with cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and/or integrative modeling is particularly promising to study the topology and structure of large protein assemblies. Among the targets studied so far are proteasomes, ribosomes, polymerases, chromatin remodelers, and photosystem complexes. Here we provide an overview of recent advances in XL-MS, the current state of the field, and a cursory outlook on future challenges.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland. Electronic address: leitner@imsb.biol.ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Leitner
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Faini
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland; Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Stengel
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland; Faculty of Science, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland. Electronic address: aebersold@imsb.biol.ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Ruedi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Aebersold
mesh_terms: D003432:Cross-Linking Reagents / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D013058:Mass Spectrometry; D011487:Protein Conformation; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D003432:Cross-Linking Reagents; D011506:Proteins
keywords: chemical crosslinking; hybrid structural biology; mass spectrometry; protein complexes