PNNL

Abstract

Global proteomic analyses are now widely applied across biological research to study changes in an organism(s) proteome correlated with a perturbation, phenotype and/or time series of interest.[1-3] Further, it has been broadly established that efficient and reproducible sample preparation workflows are crucial to successful quantitative proteome comparisons, especially when applying label free methods.[4-8] However, clinical samples are often severely limited in quantity and can preclude the application of more robust bulk sample processing workflows due to e.g. contamination, carry-over, or sample losses.[9] This has limited the effective application of global proteomics for many sample types of great interest, e.g. LCM dissected tissues, FACS sorted cells, circulating tumor cells (CTC), and early embryos. In a typical proteomics experiment, bulk homogenization is applied to generate sufficient protein for processing (> 10 µg protein), and can blend the proteomes of many different cell types and disparate tissue regions. The resulting “average” proteome, can effectively render unobservable proteome changes of interest, and preclude important applications. Global proteomic analyses of complex protein samples in nanogram quantities require a fastidious approach to achieve in-depth protein coverage and quantitative reproducibility.