Competitive ABPP of Serine Hydrolases: A Case Study on DAGL-Alpha

Competitive activity-based protein profiling is a highly efficient chemical biology technique to determine target engagement and selectivity profiles of enzyme inhibitors in complex proteomes. Fluorophosphonate-based fluorescent inhibitors are widely used as broad-spectrum probes for serine hydrolases. However, diacylglycerol lipase-α is not labeled by fluorophosphonate-based probes. To overcome this problem, we have developed a tailor-made activity-based probe that reacts with diacylglycerol lipase-α. Here we describe a case study in which we apply competitive activity-based protein profiling using a broad-spectrum and a tailor-made activity-based probe to establish selectivity and activity profiles of inhibitors targeting diacylglycerol lipase-α in the mouse brain proteome.