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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Ithaca, New York » Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture & Health » Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #206112
Title: A Comparison of nLC-ESI-MS/MS and nLC-MALDI-MS/MS for GeLC-based Protein Identification and iTRAQ-based Shotgun Quantitative Proteomics

Author
item Yang, Yong
item Howe, Kevin
item ZHANG, SHENG - CORNELL UNIVERSITY
item Thannhauser, Theodore - Ted

Submitted to: Journal of Biomolecular Techniques
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/15/2007
Publication Date: 2/14/2007
Citation: Yang, Y., Howe, K.J., Zhang, S., Thannhauser, T.W. 2007. A comparison of nlc-esi-ms/ms and nlc-maldi-ms/ms for gelc-based protein identification and itraq-based shotgun quantitative proteomics [abstract]. Journal of Biomolecular Techniques. 18:66.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The use of nLC-ESI-MS/MS in shotgun proteomics experiments and GeLC-MS/MS analysis is well accepted and routinely available in most proteomics laboratories. The same can not be said for nLC-MALDI MS/MS which has yet to experience such wide spread acceptance. This is not totally surprising given the inability to monitor the separation performance in "real time" and the time-consuming processes of off-line data analysis and interpretation that are associated with MALDI. This is unfortunate as the MALDI technology offers several critical advantages over ESI that can be exploited to improve experimental outcomes. Here we re-evaluate and demonstrate both the complementary nature of the two approaches and the synergism attainable through the employment of both ionization technologies to two common applications: protein identification in 1D gel bands and quantification of the dynamics of protein expression during ontogenesis. Our results show that by using MALDI in addition to ESI in GeLC-MS/MS experiments not only did the number of proteins identified increase by an average of 15% but the average sequence coverage for proteins identified by both techniques increased by 175% over what it was when ESI was used alone. The size of the unique peptides identified by MALDI was, on average, 25% larger than the unique peptides identified by ESI. Furthermore, the higher resolution of the TOF/TOF instrument and the greater numbers of peptides detected using MALDI improved the sensitivity, accuracy and precision of the data over what was obtained using only electrospray ionization in iTRAQ experiments carried out on a linear ion trap. These results demonstrate that the combination of nanoLC with two ionization technologies improves proteome coverage and quantitation in complex samples.