Preparative electrophoresis recent advances

Li I ley, K.S., Razzaq, A. and Dupree, P. (2002) Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis recent advances in sample preparation, detection and quantitation. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 6, 46-50. 

Traditional biochemical techniques such as liquid chromatography (LC), gel electrophoresis, capillary electrophoresis (CE), and mass spectrometry (MS) have been widely used for the complete analysis of salivary proteins and peptides. The recent advances in these technical approaches applied to peptidomics have allowed a better comprehensive analysis of peptides in human whole saliva, envisioning the identification of potential salivary biomarkers of oral and systemic diseases. Sample preparation is a critical experimental step for the successful identification of peptides using MS-based approaches, for their quantitation and identification of PTMs. 

Zone electrophoresis is used mainly as an analytical technique and, to a lesser extent, for small-scale preparative separations. The main applications are in the biochemical and clinical fields, particularly in the study of protein mixtures. Like chromatography, zone electrophoresis is mainly a practical subject, and the most important advances have involved improvements in experimental technique and the introduction and development of a range of suitable supporting media. Much of the earlier work involved the use of filter paper as the supporting medium however, in recent years filter paper has been somewhat superseded by other materials, such as cellulose acetate, starch gel and polyacrylamide gel, which permit sharper separations. 

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