A Protein Suspension-Trapping Sample Preparation for Tear Proteomics by Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

J Vis Exp. 2023 Dec 1:(202). doi: 10.3791/64617.

Abstract

Tear fluid is one of the easily accessible biofluids that can be collected non-invasively. Tear proteomics has the potential to discover biomarkers for several ocular diseases and conditions. The suspension trapping column has been reported to be an efficient and user-friendly sample preparation workflow for the broad application of downstream proteomic analysis. Yet, this strategy has not been well-studied in the analysis of human tear proteome. The present protocol describes an integrated workflow from clinical human tear samples to purified peptides for non-invasive tear protein biomarker research using mass spectrometry, which provides insights into disease biomarkers and monitoring when combined with bioinformatics analysis. A protein suspension trapping sample preparation was applied and demonstrated the discovery of tear proteome with fast, reproducible, and user-friendly procedures, as a universal, optimized sample preparation for human tear fluid analysis. In particular, the suspension trapping procedure outperformed in-solution sample preparation in terms of peptide recovery, protein identification, and shorter sample preparation time.

Publication types

  • Video-Audio Media

MeSH terms

  • Biomarkers
  • Chromatography, Liquid
  • Humans
  • Lacerations*
  • Proteome*
  • Proteomics
  • Suspensions
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Substances

  • Proteome
  • Suspensions
  • Biomarkers