New Mass-Spectrometry-Compatible Degradable Surfactant for Tissue Proteomics

Tissue
proteomics is increasingly recognized for its role in biomarker
discovery and disease mechanism investigation. However, protein solubility
remains a significant challenge in mass spectrometry (MS)-based tissue
proteomics. Conventional surfactants such as sodium dodecyl sulfate
(SDS), the preferred surfactant for protein solubilization, are not
compatible with MS. Herein, we have screened a library of surfactant-like
compounds and discovered an MS-compatible degradable surfactant (MaSDeS)
for tissue proteomics that solubilizes all categories of proteins
with performance comparable to SDS. The use of MaSDeS in the tissue
extraction significantly improves the total number of protein identifications
from commonly used tissues, including tissue from the heart, liver,
and lung. Notably, MaSDeS significantly enriches membrane proteins,
which are often under-represented in proteomics studies. The acid
degradable nature of MaSDeS makes it amenable for high-throughput
MS-based
proteomics. In addition, the thermostability of MaSDeS allows for
its use in experiments requiring high temperature to facilitate protein
extraction and solubilization. Furthermore, we have shown that MaSDeS
outperforms the other MS-compatible surfactants in terms of overall
protein solubility and the total number of identified proteins in
tissue proteomics. Thus, the use of MaSDeS will greatly advance tissue
proteomics and realize its potential in basic biomedical and clinical
research. MaSDeS could be utilized in a variety of proteomics studies
as well as general biochemical and biological experiments that employ
surfactants for protein solubilization.