Evaluation of Multidimensional Chromatography Coupled with Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC/LC−MS/MS) for Large-Scale Protein Analysis:  The Yeast Proteome

Highly complex protein mixtures can be directly analyzed after proteolysis by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). In this paper, we have utilized the combination of strong cation exchange (SCX) and reversed-phase (RP) chromatography to achieve two-dimensional separation prior to MS/MS. One milligram of whole yeast protein was proteolyzed and separated by SCX chromatography (2.1 mm i.d.) with fraction collection every minute during an 80-min elution. Eighty fractions were reduced in volume and then re-injected via an autosampler in an automated fashion using a vented-column (100 microm i.d.) approach for RP-LC-MS/MS analysis. More than 162,000 MS/MS spectra were collected…