Competitive Profiling of Ligandable Cysteines in Staphylococcus aureus with an Organogold Compound

With the idea of exploiting metal-templated reactions to achieve selective modification of cysteines in proteins for antibacterial applications, an organometallic cyclometalated Au(III) compound was explored in a competitive chemoproteomic approach based on the isoDTB-ABPP (isotopically labelled desthiobiotin azide-activity-based protein profiling) technology in S. aureus cell extracts. In this way, more than 100 ligandable cysteines where identified, of which 10 were close to functional sites of proteins encoded by essential genes indicating potential for antibiotic development. Interestingly, more than 50% of the identified ligandable sites were not engaged by organic α-chloroacetamides i…