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

Anal Methods. 2022 Mar 17;14(11):1103-1110. doi: 10.1039/d1ay02145a.

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Chromatography, Liquid
  • Electrophoresis, Capillary / methods
  • Escherichia coli
  • Peptides / chemistry
  • Proteins / chemistry
  • Proteomics* / methods
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry* / methods

Substances

  • Peptides
  • Proteins