Analysis of insoluble proteins

Abstract

The analysis of insoluble proteins represents a major technical challenge for the field of proteomics. For example, membrane proteins are often insoluble in common solvents and represent 20–30% of the proteins encoded by the human genome. Chemical analysis on an individual basis is often required and is laborious and time-consuming. This review presents an overview of methods for purification of expressed proteins using fusion tags as well as methods for analysis of insoluble proteins by mass spectrometry with a goal of achieving high-throughput analysis.

Keywords

• fusion tag
• recombinant protein
• solvent-free mass spectrometry
• MALDI
• IMS