Capillary Electrophoresis Coupled to Electrospray Ionization Tandem Mass Spectrometry for Ultra-Sensitive Proteomic Analysis of Limited Samples

Anal Chem. 2022 Jan 18;94(2):704-713. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c02929. Epub 2022 Jan 4.

Abstract

In this work, we developed an ultra-sensitive CE-MS/MS method for bottom-up proteomics analysis of limited samples, down to sub-nanogram levels of total protein. Analysis of 880 and 88 pg of the HeLa protein digest standard by CE-MS/MS yielded ∼1100 ± 46 and ∼160 ± 59 proteins, respectively, demonstrating higher protein and peptide identifications than the current state-of-the-art CE-MS/MS-based proteomic analyses with similar amounts of sample. To demonstrate potential applications of our ultra-sensitive CE-MS/MS method for the analysis of limited biological samples, we digested 500 and 1000 HeLa cells using a miniaturized in-solution digestion workflow. From 1-, 5-, and 10-cell equivalents injected from the resulted digests, we identified 744 ± 127, 1139 ± 24, and 1271 ± 6 proteins and 3353 ± 719, 5709 ± 513, and 8527 ± 114 peptide groups, respectively. Furthermore, we performed a comparative assessment of CE-MS/MS and two reversed-phased nano-liquid chromatography (RP-nLC-MS/MS) methods (monolithic and packed columns) for the analysis of a ∼10 ng HeLa protein digest standard. Our results demonstrate complementarity in the protein- and especially peptide-level identifications of the evaluated CE-MS- and RP-nLC-MS-based methods. The techniques were further assessed to detect post-translational modifications and highlight the strengths of the CE-MS/MS approach in identifying potentially important and biologically relevant modified peptides. With a migration window of ∼60 min, CE-MS/MS identified ∼2000 ± 53 proteins on average from a single injection of ∼8.8 ng of the HeLa protein digest standard. Additionally, an average of 232 ± 10 phosphopeptides and 377 ± 14 N-terminal acetylated peptides were identified in CE-MS/MS analyses at this sample amount, corresponding to 2- and 1.5-fold more identifications for each respective modification found by nLC-MS/MS methods.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Electrophoresis, Capillary / methods
  • HeLa Cells
  • Humans
  • Phosphopeptides
  • Proteomics* / methods
  • Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization* / methods
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry / methods

Substances

  • Phosphopeptides