Capillary Electrophoresis-Based Proteomic Techniques for Biomarker Discovery

Besides proteome complexity, the greatest bioanalytical challenge facing comprehensive proteomic analysis, particularly in the identification of low abundance proteins, is related to the large variation of protein relative abundances. In contrast to universally enriching all analytes by a similar degree, the result of the capillary isotachophoresis (CITP) stacking process is that major components may be diluted, but trace compounds are concentrated. Such selective enhancement toward low abundance proteins drastically reduces the range of relative protein abundances within complex proteomes and greatly enhances the resulting proteome coverage. Furthermore, CITP offers seamless combination with nano-reversed phase liquid chromatography (nano-RPLC) as two highly resolving and completely orthogonal separation techniques critically needed for analyzing complex proteomes.