Liquid Chromatographic and Mass Spectrometric Methods for Quantitative Proteomic Analysis from Single-Cell and Nanogram-Level Samples

Liquid chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry (MS) are two critical components in proteomics. Advances in methods for both LC and MS have significantly enhanced protein identification and quantifications of limited amounts of proteins, particularly at the picogram-to-nanogram level of proteins. In this study, we explored various LC conditions and MS platforms to optimize protein identification and quantification using data-independent acquisition (DIA). Our investigation focused on evaluating the sensitivity for protein identification, reproducibility of quantification, and robustness across multiple models, specifically focused on analyzing proteins at pico- to nanogram levels, with an emphasis on single-cell proteomics. We further applied our approach for the proteomic analysis of HeLa single cells. Overall, we identified and quantified over 6300 proteins at the single-cell level amount of peptides with a coefficient of variation (CV) of less than 20%, and detected up to 5000 proteins from isolated single HeLa cell samples. Finally, we analyzed docetaxel-treated and nontreated PC3 cells to reveal proteome changes at the single-cell level. This study provides a comprehensive technical evaluation for LC-MS methods in protein identification and quantification for analytical applications involving single-cell proteomics from the picogram to nanogram level of proteins.