PNNL

Abstract

We describe approaches for proteomics analysis using electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry coupled with fast reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) separations. The RPLC separations used 50 µm i.d. fused silica capillaries packed with micron-sized C18-bonded porous silica particles and achieved peak capacities of 130-420 for peptides. When these separations were combined with a linear ion trap mass spectrometer, ~1,000 proteins could be identified in 50 minutes based upon the identification of ~4,000 tryptic peptides; ~550 proteins in 20 minutes from ~1,800 peptides; and ~250 proteins in 8 minutes from ~700 peptides for a S. oneidensis tryptic digest. The dynamic range for protein identification was determined to be ~3-4 orders magnitude of relative protein abundance on the basis of known proteins in human blood plasma analyses. We found that 55% of the MS/MS spectra acquired during the entire analysis (and up to 100% of the MS/MS spectra acquired from the most data rich zone) had sufficient quality for identifying peptides. The results indicate that such analyses using very fast (minutes) RPLC separations based on columns packed with micro-sized porous particles are primarily limited by the MS/MS analysis speed.