Efficient genetic encoding of phosphoserine and its non-hydrolyzable analog

Serine phosphorylation is a key post-translational modification that regulates diverse biological processes. Powerful analytical methods have identified thousands of phosphorylation sites, but many of their functions remain to be deciphered. A key to understanding the function of protein phosphorylation is access to phosphorylated proteins, but this is often challenging or impossible. Here we evolve an orthogonal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA CUA pair that directs the efficient incorporation of phosphoserine into recombinant proteins in E. coli . Moreover, combining the orthogonal pair with a metabolically engineered E. coli enables the site-specific incorporation of a non-hydrolyzable analog of phosphoserine. Our approach enables quantitative decoding of the amber stop codon as phosphoserine and we purify several milligrams-per-liter of proteins bearing biologically relevant phosphorylations that were previously challenging or impossible to access: including phosphorylated ubiquitin and a kinase (Nek7) that is synthetically activated by a genetically encoded phosphorylation in its activation loop.