Gel based and gel-free search for plasma membrane proteins in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) augments the comprehensive data sets of membrane protein repertoire

Plasma membrane (PM) encompasses total cellular contents, serves as a living barrier regulates all cellular exchanges in a spatiotemporal fashion. Most of the essential tasks of PMs including molecular transport, cell-cell interaction and signal transduction are carried out by their proteinaceous components, which make the PM protein repertoire to be diverse and dynamic. Here, we report the systematic analysis of PM proteome of a food legume, chickpea and have developed a PM proteome reference map. Proteins were extracted from highly enriched PM fractions using aqueous two-phase partitioning. To address a population of PM proteins as comprehensive as possible, both gel-based and gel-free approaches were employed, which led to the identification of a set of 2754 non-redundant proteins. These included both integral membrane proteins having bilayer spanning domains as well as peripheral proteins associated with PMs through protein-protein interactionsor post-translational modifications.