Sample preparation

Sample preparation is critical for proteomics analysis, and Creative Proteomics provides sample preparation service according to your needs.

Proteomics aims to study dynamically changing proteins expressed by a whole organism, specific tissue or cellular compartment under certain conditions. Consequently, two main goals of proteomics research are to identify proteins derived from complex mixtures extracted from cells, and to quantify expression levels of those identified proteins.

Each of these protein sources is comprised of many more components than the proteins themselves, these non-protein sources include nucleic acids, lipids, sugars, and a wide variety of small molecules. Furthermore, unlike DNA and RNA, both of which are chemically homogeneous, proteins are very heterogeneous and vary widely with respect to their size, charge, hydrophobicity, and structure. In addition, many proteins undergo post-translational modification and may have a variety of non-peptide moieties bound to them. This chemical heterogeneity makes isolating proteins extremely challenging.

In proteomics analysis, sample preparation is the most sensitive step in the entire procedure, and here are a few tips. The treatment of the sample must be kept to a minimum to avoid protein losses; the sample should be kept as cold as possible to avoid protein modifications and prevent enzyme activities; the preparation time should be kept as short as possible to avoid losses and modifications; all aggregates and complexes should be disrupted; disturbing compounds should be removed without removing proteins. It should also be noted that there are more than one possible procedure to treat a sample, and a 100% representation of the proteins contained in a cell will never be obtained in practice. Usually the method, which will display the highest number of different proteins, is chosen.

http://www.creative-proteomics.com/services/sample-preparation.htm