In the field of proteomic investigation, the analysis of membrane proteins still faces many technical challenges. A fundamental question in this puzzle is how to maintain a proper solvent environment to allow the hydrophobic proteins to remain solubilized. We propose that the denaturation of membrane proteins in a highly concentrated urea solution enables them to be ionized such that ionic exchange chromatography can be employed to separate them. The membrane proteins prepared from the mouse liver were dissolved in 6M guanidine hydrochloride, 20mM Tris-HCl, pH 9.0, and loaded onto a tandem chromatography apparatus coupled with Q-Sepharose FF and Sephacryl S-200HR. These columns were able to adsorb 97.87% of the membrane protein preparations. Using a linear NaCl (0-1.0M) gradient, the bound proteins were eluted out at 0.1-1.0M NaCl, and examined by SDS-PAGE. Furthermore the protein bands underwent excision and digestion with trypsin, followed by reverse-phase chromatography for the separation of the digested peptides and ionic-trap mass spectrometry for the identification of the proteins. From the SDS-PAGE gels, the overlap between proteins from neighboring bands was only 21.34%, indicating that the anionic-size exclusion coupling chromatography efficiently separated these membrane proteins. Of a total of 392 proteins identified, 306 were membrane proteins or membrane-associated proteins. Based on the calculation of hydrophobicity, the GRAVY scores of 83 proteins are greater than, or equal to, 0.00. Taking all of this evidence together, our results revealed that this approach is satisfactory for studies on the membrane proteome from the mouse liver.
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