Issue 11, 2022

Preparative capillary electrophoresis (CE) fractionation of protein digests improves protein and peptide identification in bottom-up proteomics

Abstract

Reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) is widely used to reduce sample complexity prior to mass spectrometry (MS) analysis in bottom-up proteomics. Improving peptide separation in complex samples enables lower-abundance proteins to be identified. Multidimensional separations that combine orthogonal separation modes improve protein and peptide identifications over RPLC alone. Here we report a preparative capillary electrophoresis (CE) fractionation method that combines CE and RPLC separations. Using this method, we demonstrate improved protein and peptide identification in a tryptic digest of E. coli cell lysate, with 132 ± 33% more protein identifications and 185 ± 65% more peptide identifications over non-fractionated samples. Fractionation enables detection of lower-abundance proteins in this complex sample. We demonstrate improved coverage of ovarian cancer biomarker MUC16 isolated from conditioned cell media, with 6.73% sequence coverage using CE fractionation compared to 2.74% coverage without preparative fractionation. This new method will allow researchers performing bottom-up proteomics to harness the advantages of CE separations while using widely available LC-MS/MS instrumentation.

Graphical abstract: Preparative capillary electrophoresis (CE) fractionation of protein digests improves protein and peptide identification in bottom-up proteomics

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Dec 2021
Accepted
12 Feb 2022
First published
17 Feb 2022

Anal. Methods, 2022,14, 1103-1110

Preparative capillary electrophoresis (CE) fractionation of protein digests improves protein and peptide identification in bottom-up proteomics

S. D. Weaver, N. Schuster-Little and R. J. Whelan, Anal. Methods, 2022, 14, 1103 DOI: 10.1039/D1AY02145A

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