MPI für Biochemie  

Proteomics and Signal Transduction
Matthias Mann

Peptide separation with immobilized pI strips is an attractive alternative to in-gel protein digestion for proteome analysis

 


Proteomics. 2008 Nov 10. [Epub ahead of print]

Peptide separation with immobilized pI strips is an attractive alternative to in-gel protein digestion for proteome analysis.

Hubner NC, Ren S, Mann M.


Department of Proteomics and Signal Transduction, Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany.

 

Complex protein mixtures have traditionally been separated by 2-DE. Görg introduced IPGs as the first dimension of protein separation. In recent years, MS-based proteomics has increasingly become the method of choice for identifying and quantifying large number of proteins. In that technology, to decrease analyte complexity, proteins are often separated by 1-D SDS-gel electrophoresis before online MS analysis. Here, we investigate a recently introduced device for peptide separation with IPGs (Agilent OFFGEL). Loading capacity for optimal peptide focusing is below 100 mug and - similar to 2-D gels - IEF is more efficient in the acidic than the basic pH region. The 24-well fractionation format resulted in about 40% additional peptide identifications but less than 20% additional protein identifications than the 12-well format. Compared to in-gel digestion, peptide IEF consistently identified a third more proteins with equal number of fractions. Low protein starting amounts (10 mug) still resulted in deep proteome coverage. Advantages of the in-gel format include better reliability and robustness. Considering its superior performance, diminished sample and work-up requirements, peptide IEF will become a method of choice for sample preparation in proteomics.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/