Shotgun analysis of membrane proteomes by an improved SDS-assisted sample preparation method coupled with liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

Analysis of the membrane proteins, particularly the integral membrane proteins, is limited by the inherent membrane hydrophobicity. Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) is one of the most efficient reagents used for the extraction of membrane proteins, but its presence in samples interferes with LC–MS-based proteomic analyses because it affects RP-LC separations and electrospray ionization. In this paper, we present an improved sample preparation strategy based on SDS-assisted digestion and peptide-level SDS-removal using an optimized potassium dodecyl sulfate (KDS) precipitation method (SSDP method) for shotgun analysis of the membrane proteome. This method utilizes a high concentration of SDS (1.0%) to lyse the membranes and to solubilize the hydrophobic membrane proteins, resulting in a more complete protein digestion in the diluted SDS buffer (0.1% SDS), and a high efficiency of SDS removal and peptide recovery by the optimized KDS precipitation for protein identification. The SSDP method provides evidence that proteins can be efficiently digested, and the SDS can be decreased to <0.01% allowing >95% peptide recovery. Compared to other sample preparation methods commonly used in shotgun membrane proteomics, the newly developed method not only increased the identified number of the total proteins, membrane proteins and integral membrane proteins by an average of 33.1%, 37.2% and 40.5%, respectively, but also leading to the identification of highest number of matching peptides. All the results showed that the method yielded better recovery and reliability in the identification of the proteins especially the highly hydrophobic integral membrane proteins, and thus providing a promising tool for the shotgun analysis of membrane proteome.