Investigation of Glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)‐Plasma Membrane Interaction in Live Cells and the Influence of GPI Glycan Structure on the Interaction

Glycosylphosphatidylinositols (GPIs) need to interact with other components in the cell membrane to transduce transmembrane signals. A bifunctional GPI probe was employed for photoaffinity‐based proximity labelling and identification of GPI‐interacting proteins in the cell membrane. This probe contained the entire core structure of GPIs and was functionalized with photoreactive diazirine and clickable alkyne to facilitate its crosslinking with proteins and attachment of an affinity tag. It was disclosed that this probe was more selective than our previously reported probe containing only a part structure of the GPI core for cell membrane incorporation and an improved probe for studying GPI‐cell membrane interaction. Eighty‐eight unique membrane proteins, many of which are related to GPIs/GPI‐anchored proteins, were identified utilizing this probe. The proteomics dataset is a valuable resource for further analyses and data mining to find new GPI‐related proteins and signalling pathways. A comparison of these results with those of our previous probe provided direct evidence for the profound impact of GPI glycan structure on its interaction with the cell membrane. A bifunctional GPI derivative containing the entire conserved core structure of GPIs was proved to be a useful probe to target the cell membrane and tag GPI‐related membrane proteins to facilitate protein isolation and proteomics analysis.