Cost effective protein identification discovered

Scientists have discovered a process to make protein identification less costly and time consuming, it has been revealed.

In a study published by Proteome Science, Jing Chen, Lorena Canales and Rachel Neal aimed to find an alternative to the current process which involves reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) interfaced to electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS).

This method is commonly used for the identification of peptides from proteolytically cleaved proteins embedded in a polyacrylamide gel matrix as well as for metabolomics screening, however, it can be time consuming, expensive and creates the possibility of cross-contamination.

However, the scientists found that the use of a chip-based nano-ESI platform (Advion NanoMate) eliminates many of these problems by creating an unchanging sample matrix and enhancing spray stability with attendant increases in reproducibility.

"The advantages of this method include full automation, lack of cross-contamination, low cost and high throughput," the team stated in the report.