Dynamic extracellular proximal interaction profiling reveals Low-Density Lipoprotein Receptor as a new Epidermal Growth Factor signaling pathway component

Plasma membrane proteins are critical mediators of cell-cell and cell-environment interactions, pivotal in intracellular signal transmission vital for cellular functionality. Proximity-dependent biotinylation approaches such as BioID combined with mass spectrometry have begun illuminating the landscape of proximal protein interactions within intracellular compartments. However, their deployment in studies of the extracellular environment remains scarce. Here, we present extracellular TurboID (ecTurboID), a method designed to profile cell surface interactions in living cells on short timescales. We first report on the careful optimization of experimental and data analysis strategies that enable the capture of extracellular protein interaction information. Leveraging the ecTurboID technique, we unveiled the proximal interactome of multiple plasma membrane proteins, notably the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). This led to identifying the low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) as a newfound extracellular protein associating with EGFR, contingent upon the presence of the EGF ligand. We showed that 15 minutes of EGF stimulation induced LDLR localization to the plasma membrane to associate with proteins involved in EGFR regulation. This modified proximity labelling methodology allows us to dynamically study the associations between plasma membrane proteins in the extracellular environment. One Sentence SummaryWe developed extracellular TurboID (ecTurboID) as a new proximity dependent biotinylation approach that can capture dynamic interactions at the cell surface, identifying Low-Density Lipoprotein Receptor as a new ligand-dependent extracellular partner of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor.