Chaperones, but not oxidized proteins, are ubiquitinated after oxidative stress

After oxidative stress proteins which are oxidatively modified are degraded by the 20S proteasome. However, several studies documented an enhanced ubiquitination of yet unknown proteins. Since ubiqutination is a prerequisite for degradation by the 26S proteasome in an ATP-dependent manner this raises the question whether these proteins are also oxidized and, if not, what proteins need to be ubiquitinated and degraded after oxidative conditions. By determination of oxidized- and ubiquitinated proteins we demonstrate here that most oxidized proteins are not preferentially ubiquitinated. However, we were able to confirm an increase of ubiquitinated proteins 16h upon oxidative stress. Therefore, we isolated ubiquitinated proteins from hydrogen peroxide treated cells, as well as from control and lactacystin, an irreversible proteasome inhibitor, treated cells, and identified some of these proteins by MALDI tandem mass spectrometry (MALDI MS/MS). As a result we obtained 24 different proteins which can be categorized into the following groups: chaperones, energy metabolism, cytoskeleton/intermediate filaments, and protein translation/ribosome biogenesis. The special set of identified, ubiquitinated proteins confirm the thesis that ubiquitination upon oxidative stress is no random process to degrade the mass of oxidized proteins, but concerns a special group of functional proteins.