Evaluation of peptide fractionation strategies used in proteome analysis

Peptide fractionation is extremely important for the comprehensive analysis of complex protein mixtures. Although a few comparisons of the relative separation efficiencies of 2-D methodologies using complex biological samples have appeared, a systematic evaluation was conducted in this study. Four different fractionation methods, namely strong-cation exchange, hydrophilic interaction chromatography, alkaline-RP and solution isoelectric focusing, which can be used prior to LC-MS/MS analysis, were compared. Strong-cation exchange × RPLC was used after desalting the sample; significantly more proteins were identified, compared with the nondesalted sample (1990 and 1375). We also found that the use of a combination of analytical methods resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of unique peptides that could be identified, compared with only a small increase in protein levels. The increased number of distinct peptides that can be identified is especially beneficial, not only for unequivocally identifying proteins but also for proteomic studies involving posttranslational modifications and peptide-based quantification approaches using stable isotope labeling. The identification and quantification of more peptides per protein provide valuable information that improves both the quantification of, and confidence of protein identification.