PNNL

Abstract

There is significant interest in characterization of the human plasma proteome due to its potential for providing biomarkers applicable to clinical diagnosis and treatment and for gaining a better understanding of human diseases. We describe here a strategy for comparative proteome analyses of human plasma, which is applicable to biomarker identifications for various disease states. Multidimensional liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry has been applied to make comparative proteome analyses of plasma samples from an individual prior to and 9 h after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) administration. Peptide peak areas and the number of peptide identifications for each protein were used to evaluate the reproducibility of LC-MS/MS and to compare relative changes in protein concentration between the samples following LPS treatment. A total of 1563 distinct plasma proteins were confidently identified with 26 proteins observed to be significantly increased in concentration following LPS administration, including several known inflammatory response or acute-phase mediators, and thus constitute potential biomarkers for inflammatory response.