Functional Phosphoproteomics of Oncogenic KRAS Signaling

Identification of oncogene-mediated phosphorylation events is essential to understanding the molecular determinants responsible for cancer development and progression. Here, we identify KRAS-regulated phosphorylation events using label-free quantitation-based comparative phosphoproteomics analyses of immortalized human bronchial epithelial cells that express oncogenic KRAS as well as cells that do not. Further, we demonstrate integration of the identified phosphorylation events with the Pathway Interaction Database to infer KRAS-regulated pathways, which may have implications in KRAS-associated lung adenocarcinoma development. Taken together, our study provides an overview of the functional phosphoproteomics approach involving cell culture, preparation of whole cell lysates, trypsin digestion, phosphopeptide enrichment, mass spectrometry analyses, label-free quantitative analyses, and signaling pathway analyses to study KRAS-targeted events.