Optimized Protein Recover During Solvent Precipitation Depends on Salt Type

Ziheng Dang and Alan A. Doucette, Department of Chemistry, Dalhousie University

Introduction

Precipitation in organic solvent is a classic approach to purify and concentrate proteome samples ahead of mass spectrometry analysis. Our lab has shown that salt ions are essential to facilitate quantitative proteome precipitation [1]. The goal of the current study is to examine the precipitation efficiency of proteins in organic solvent (i.e. acetone), as influenced by the presence of different types of cations and anions. This work will lead to an optimized proteome purification and preconcentration protocol to maximize top-down and bottom-up proteoform characterization by mass
spectrometry.