Protein analysis with large volume sample stacking with an electrosmotic flow pump: a potential approach for proteomics

Ultrahigh-Sensitivity Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis of Trace Amounts of Nitrate and Nitrite in Environmental Water Samples

The role of nitrite (NO2−) and nitrate (NO3−) is essential in the global nitrogen cycle. Monitoring their concentration in environmental and industrial aqueous samples, surface water, soil, food and agricultural products are of high importance. Especially, the effect of anthropogenic emission, i.e., intensified agriculture is essential due to the overuse of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizers. The most widely utilized methods for nitrate and nitrite determination are colorimetry, potentiometry, UV absorption and liquid chromatography. Among them, UV spectroscopy is the most frequently used technique due to the fact of its versatility and simplicity. However, there are industrial and academic needs to develop new methods to overcome some drawbacks of the currently used techniques such as an inadequate limit of detection and potential interferences with organic compounds in the sample. In this paper, we report on the development of a new analytical method based on capillary electrophoresis separation with high-sensitivity UV detection, capable of measuring trace concentrations of nitrite and nitrate well below the current limits of UV spectroscopy methods. During the development process special attention was paid to practical aspects, i.e., the method was tested to quantify nitrate and nitrite in various surface water samples.

Electrophoretic analysis of cations using large-volume sample stacking with an electroosmotic flow pump using capillaries coated with neutral and cationic polymers

To realize the high-performance and simple-operation analysis of cationic compounds in capillary electrophoresis, we investigated large-volume sample stacking with an electroosmotic flow pump (LVSEP) using capillaries with hydrophilic and weakly cationic inner surface. Three capillary modification methods were employed: thermally passivated physical coating with polymer mixture of poly(vinyl alcohol) and poly(allylamine); covalent modification with random copolymer of acryl amide and 3-(methacryloylamino)propyltrimethylammonium chloride; easily preparable physical coating with dimethyldioctadecylammonium bromide and polyoxyethylene stearate. In these capillaries, the electroosmotic flow (EOF) was well suppressed in the high ionic strength (I) electrolyte under the acidic and basic pH, whereas the EOF was enhanced in the low I electrolyte, indicating a suitable EOF property for the rapid LVSEP and following separation. In the LVSEP-capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) analyses of benzylamine and 1-naphthylethylamine, up to 550-fold sensitivity increases were successfully obtained in the three capillaries without significantly reducing the repeatability and resolution. LVSEP-cyclodextrin-modified CZE of chlorpheniramine and brompheniramine was also carried out, resulting in up to 380-fold sensitivity enhancement with keeping the baseline separation for the enantiomers. Finally, we performed the LVSEP-CZE analysis of basic proteins, where up to 100-fold sensitivity increases were achieved, but a peak broadening was observed due to the sample adsorption in the low I sample matrix.

Electrophoretic determination of albumin in urine using on-line concentration techniques

To improve the sensitivity of the UV-detection for the determination of trace amounts of albumin by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), five on-line preconcentration techniques, including field-amplified sample stacking (FASS), head-column field-amplified sample stacking (HC-FASS), stacking with a polymer solution, dynamic pH junction and large volume sample stacking (LVSS) with reversed polarity, were compared. Sensitivity enhancement factor and reproducibility were two factors that were used to assess the suitability of each method. To minimize protein adsorption on the capillary wall, capillaries were covalently modified with anionic polymer, poly(sulfopropylmethacrylate) coating. All used methods have good reproducibility. The maximum sensitivity enhancement factor (about 67-fold in terms of peak heights) was achieved with LVSS technique. The concentration limit of detection (LOD) (S/N=3) for the human serum albumin obtained with the optimized LVSS approach was 15 microg/ml with UV-detection. The method was further evaluated for the analysis of urine samples with gel-filtration-based sample-desalting procedure.

Capillary electrophoresis-based separation techniques for the analysis of proteins

CE offers the advantages of high speed, great efficiency, as well as the requirement of minimum amounts of sample and buffer for the analysis of proteins. In this review, we summarize the CE-based techniques coupled with absorption, LIF, and MS detection systems for the analysis of proteins mostly within the past 5 years. The basic principle of each technique and its advantages and disadvantages for protein analysis are discussed in brief. Advanced CE techniques, including on-column concentration techniques and high-efficiency multidimensional separation techniques, for high-throughput protein profiling of complex biological samples and/or of single cells are emphasized. Although the developed techniques provide improved peak capacity, they have not become practical tools for proteomics, mainly because of poor reproducibility, low-sample lading capacity, and low throughput due to ineffective interfaces between two separation dimensions and that between separation and MS systems. In order to identify the complexities and dynamics of the proteomes expressed by cells, tissues, or organisms, techniques providing improved analytical sensitivity, throughput, and dynamic ranges are still demanded.

Online concentration and separation of basic proteins using a cationic polyelectrolyte in the presence of reversed electroosmotic flow

We report an online concentration and separation method for basic proteins using poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA) solutions in the presence of reversed EOF. Using a capillary dynamically coated with 2% PDDA containing 0.1 M NaCl and filled with 1.2% PDDA under neutral conditions (10 mM phosphate, pH 7.0), we have demonstrated the separation of six basic proteins with peak efficiencies ranging from 175 000 to 616 000 plates/m and RSDs of migration time less than 0.4%. Additionally, high-speed separation of six basic proteins (<7 min) was achieved using a short capillary filled with 0.6% PDDA solutions. Under injection of the large-volume sample (210 nL), the LODs at S/N of 3 for basic proteins are down to nanomolar range. For example, the LOD for lysozyme is 1.2 nM, which is a 260-fold sensitivity enhancement compared with conventional injection method. The proposed method has been applied to the stacking of lysozyme in human saliva samples. Without any pretreatment, we also demonstrated the capability of this method to detect low amounts of peptide samples through the stacking of tryptic peptide of myoglobin. The experimental results indicate that our proposed method has great potential for use in clinical diagnosis and proteomics applications.

Sample enrichment techniques in capillary electrophoresis: Focus on peptides and proteins

Compared to chromatography-based techniques, the concentration limits of detection (CLOD) associated with capillary electrophoresis are worse, and these have largely precluded their use in many practical applications. To overcome this limitation, researchers from various disciplines have exerted tremendous efforts toward developing strategies for increasing the concentration sensitivities of capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, via the so-called sample enrichment techniques. This review highlights selected developments and advances in this area as applied to the analyses of proteins and peptides in the last 5 years.

Solid-phase extraction and large-volume sample stacking with an electroosmotic flow pump in capillary electrophoresis for determination of methotrexate and its metabolites in human plasma

This paper describes approaches for large-volume sample stacking (LVSS) with an EOF pumpin CE for the determination of methotrexate (MTX) and its metabolites in human plasma. After pretreatment of plasma through a SPE cartridge, a large sample volume was loaded by hydrodynamic injection (3 psi, 70 s) into the capillary filled with phosphate buffer (70 mM, pH 6.0) containing 0.01% polyethylene oxide. Following removal of a large plug of sample matrix from the capillary using polarity switching (-25 kV), the separation of anionic analytes was subsequently performed without changing polarity again, achieving an improvement of sensitivity of around a 100-fold. The method was applied to therapeutic drug monitoring of MTX in one acute lymphoblastic leukemia patient. This study is one of very few applications showing the feasibility of LVSS in analysis of biological samples by CE.

Negatively charged sol-gel column with stable electroosmotic flow for online preconcentration of zwitterionic biomolecules in capillary electromigration separations

A negatively charged sol-gel coating was developed for on-line preconcentration of zwitterionic biomolecules in capillary electrophoresis (CE), using asparagine and myoglobin as representative zwitterionic bioanalytes. The sol-gel coating was created by using a solution containing three precursors: mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTMS), tetramethoxysilane (TMOS), and n-octadecyltriethoxysilane (C18-TEOS). The resulting sol-gel coating contained chemically bonded mercaptopropyl functional groups that were further oxidized by hydrogen peroxide to the corresponding sulfonic acid moieties. Such a surface-bonded sol-gel coating can carry a negative charge over a wide range of pH due to the presence of deprotonated sulfonic acid groups. Under favorable pH conditions, the negatively charged sol-gel coating can facilitate the extraction of positively charged analytes from a zwitterionic sample through electrostatic interaction. This principle was employed to extract myoglobin and asparagine by passing aqueous samples of these zwitterionic analytes through a negatively charged sol-gel column. The extracted analytes were then desorbed and focused via local pH change and stacking. The local pH change was accomplished by passing a buffer solution with a pH above the solute p/ value, while a dynamic pH junction between the sample solution and the background electrolyte was utilized to facilitate solute focusing. The sorption/desorption phenomena could, perhaps, also be explained on the basis of ion-exchange and local pH junction effects. On-line preconcentration and analysis results obtained on sulfonated sol-gel columns were compared with those obtained on an uncoated fused silica capillary of identical dimensions using conventional sample injections. Using UV detection, the presented sample preconcentration technique provided a sensitivity enhancement factor (SEF) on the order of 3 x 10(3) for myoglobin, and 7 x 10(3) for asparagine.

On-line sample enrichment for the determination of proteins by capillary zone electrophoresis with poly(vinyl alcohol)-coated bubble cell capillaries

Field-amplified sample stacking (FASS) is used to separate basic proteins in a poly-(vinyl alcohol)-coated bubble cell capillary. To our knowledge, this is the first paper describing the on-column stacking of proteins (as cations) using FASS in bubble cell capillary. The bubble cell capillary is fabricated using a one-step method. Cetyltrimethylammonium chloride is added into the running buffer to reverse the EOF and, thus, to pump the water plug out during the sample stacking step. The effect of the water plug lengths and sample injection durations were investigated and optimized. The results obtained were compared with those for the normal capillary without bubble cell in terms of resolution and sensitivity enhancement. Under the optimal condition, this method can improve the sensitivity of the peak areas ranging from 5000- to 26 000-fold. The RSDs (n = 5) of the migration time and peak area are satisfactory (less than 0.6 and 12%, respectively). Application of the capillary electrophoresis method with bubble cell, FASS, and UV detection thereby leads to the determination of these proteins at concentrations ranging from 3 to 10 ng/mL, based on a signal-to-noise ratio of 3:1.

On-line sample concentration techniques in capillary electrophoresis: velocity gradient techniques and sample concentration techniques for biomolecules

Methods with a high sensitivity and high separation efficiency are goals in analytical separation techniques. On-line sample concentration techniques in capillary electrophoresis (CE) separations have rapidly grown in popularity over the past few years because they achieve this goal. This review describes the methodology and theory associated with a number of different techniques, including electrokinetic and chromatographic methods. For small molecules, several on-line concentration methods based on velocity gradient techniques are described, in which the electrophoretic velocities of the analyte molecules are manipulated by field amplification, sweeping, and isotachophoretic migration, resulting in the on-line concentration of the analyte zones. In addition, the on-line concentration methods for macromolecules are described, since the techniques used for macromolecules (DNAs and proteins), are different from those for small molecules, with respect to either mechanism or methodology. Recent studies relating to this topic are also discussed, including electrophoretic and chromatographic techniques on capillary or microchip.

Large-volume stacking in capillary electrophoresis using pH hysteresis of the electroosmotic flow in a bare fused-silica capillary

For large-volume stacking with the electroosmotic flow pump (LVSEP) in capillary electrophoresis of anionic analytes it is required that the electroosmotic mobility (EOM) should be smaller than the magnitudes of the effective mobilities of the analytes. When a fused-silica capillary is treated with an acidic solution, the silanoate group on the silica surface is neutralized to silanol and the EOM is suppressed. Due to the slow deprotonation equilibrium of the silanol group at an intermediate pH, this reduced EOM can be retained during a number of electrophoresis runs. Using a bare fused-silica capillary preconditioned with 0.01 M HCl, successful LVSEP at pH 6.0 was achieved for weakly acidic compounds with two orders of magnitude enhancements in the concentration sensitivity. The repeatability in migration times of ten analytes stacked by LVSEP in a single day was excellent with the relative standard deviation (RSD) less than 1% (n = 6). The day-to-day repeatability was also excellent with RSD less than 3% (n = 3 x 6) when the capillary was preconditioned each day.

On-Line Concentration of a Protein Using Denaturation by Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate

A novel method for the on-column sample stacking of proteins is described. The strategy takes advantage of interactions between protein molecules and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) monomers. A long plug of a protein sample (either acidic or basic) is injected into a capillary filled with a background electrolyte (BGE) containing SDS. When a potential is applied, the proteins interact with SDS monomers in the BGE to form protein-SDS complexes that migrate more slowly than the corresponding uncomplexed protein, resulting in protein stacking. Both acidic and basic proteins migrate at an almost identical electrophoretic velocity after stacking, which indicates that the protein-SDS complexes formed in the BGE zone have a similar charge/mass ratio. The mechanism of stacking was investigated using a sample consisting of a basic protein, lysozyme, and a small molecule, methylene blue. The findings clearly show that two interactions with SDS occur, a stepwise binding interaction between protein molecules and SDS monomers and an interaction in which the small molecules enter into micelles formed by SDS molecules. The method was also applied to the detection of a protein labeled with a fluorescent labeling reagent at trace levels. The labeled protein was detected even under labeling conditions where the labeling efficiency was too low to detect by short-plug injection.

Proteomics: general strategies and application to nutritionally relevant proteins

Proteomics as a subset of applied genomics technologies will be a key area of biology during the first decade or two of the new Millennium, and that it will have major impact, both directly and indirectly, on nutritional science. The aim of this review is to summarize information about general strategies of proteome and its application to important food proteins (plant, animal, and microbial). Methods are also described for protein separation, identification and determination. This article covers papers published within the last decade.