Prefractionation Using Microscale Solution IEF

Proteomics often involves systematic analyses of proteomes that are constantly changing in response to changes in the environment of the cell, tissue, or organism being analyzed. Due to limitations of all current protein profiling methods, powerful, reliable proteome prefractionation methods prior to two-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) gels or alternative non-2DE gel methods are needed for in-depth quantitative comparisons of the complex proteomes typically encountered with samples from higher eukaryotes. The microscale solution isoelectrofocusing (MicroSol IEF) fractionation method is capable of reproducibly dividing complex proteomes into as many as seven well-resolved fractions based on the proteins’ pIs on a small volume scale (∼0.65mL/fraction). When MicroSol IEF is combined with narrow pH range 2DE gels or with alternative downstream analysis methods, it can substantially increase the detection dynamic range and the total number of proteins that can be quantitatively compared. Although MicroSol IEF is reasonably reproducible, subtle variations can occur in different separations similar to the minor variations often seen in most separations of proteins. Therefore, for reliable quantitative comparisons the samples to be compared should be differentially labeled with either Cy dyes or stable isotope labels prior to mixing and separation in a single MicroSol IEF run. Larger numbers of samples can be compared across many MicroSol IEF separations by using a differentially labeled internal standard composed of equal aliquots of all samples to be compared.