Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics measures peptides derived from proteins by proteolytic cleavage. Before performing the analysis by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS/MS), nanoelectrospray-MS/MS (NanoES-MS/MS) or liquid chromatography-MS/MS (LC-MS/MS), the peptide mixtures need to be cleaned, concentrated and often selectively enriched or pre-fractionated, for which we employ simple, self-made and extremely economical stop-and-go-extraction tips (StageTips). StageTips are ordinary pipette tips containing very small disks made of beads with reversed phase, cation-exchange or anion-exchange surfaces embedded in a Teflon mesh. The fixed nature of the beads allows flexible combination of disks with different surfaces to obtain multi-functional tips. Disks containing different surface functionalities and loose beads such as titania and zirconia for phosphopeptide enrichment can be combined. Incorporation into an automated workflow has also been demonstrated. Desalting and concentration takes approximately 5 min while fractionation or enrichment takes approximately 30 min.

Proteomics is critically dependent on optimal sample preparation. Particularly, the interface between protein digestion and mass spectrometric analysis has a large influence on the overall quality and sensitivity of the analysis. We here describe a novel procedure in which a very small disk of beads embedded in a Teflon meshwork is placed as a microcolumn into pipet tips. Termed Stage, for STop And Go Extraction, the procedure has been implemented with commercially available material (C18 Empore Disks (3M, Minneapolis, MN)) as frit and separation material. The disk is introduced in a simple and fast process yielding a convenient and completely reliable procedure for the production of self-packed microcolumns in pipet tips. It is held in place free of obstacles solely by the narrowing tip, ensuring optimized loading and elution of analytes. Five disks are conveniently placed in 1 min, adding <0.1 cent in material costs to the price of each tip. The system allows fast loading with low backpressure (>300 micro/min for the packed column using manual force) while eliminating the possibility of blocking. The loading capacity of C18-StageTips (column bed: 0.4 mm diameter, 0.5 mm length) is 2-4 microg of protein digest, which can be increased by using larger diameter or stacked disks. Five femtomole of tryptic BSA digest could be recovered quantitatively. We have found that the Stage system is well-suited as a universal sample preparation system for proteomics.

Proteomic LC-MS approaches combined with genome-annotated databases currently allow identification of thousands of proteins from complex mixtures (1). Approaches have also been developed for relative quantitation using stable isotope labeling (2-4). Recently not only comprehensive quantitation studies between two states (5, 6) but also protein-protein (7, 8), protein-peptide (9), and protein-drug (10) interaction analyses have been reported. So far, however, a comprehensive approach for determining protein concentrations in one sample has not been established. Protein concentrations are one of the most basic and important parameters in quantitative proteomics because the kinetics/dynamics of the cellular proteome is described in terms of changes in the concentrations of proteins in particular compartments. Biological experiments often require at least some information on protein abundance for correct interpretation. In the past, crude quantitative information could be drawn from the intensity of gel staining in comparison to a known amount of marker protein. However, in complex mixture analysis, individual proteins cannot be stained individually, and usually all information about protein abundance is lost. So far, isotope-labeled synthetic peptides have been used as internal standards for absolute quantitation of particular proteins of interest (11,12). This approach is in principle applicable to comprehensive analysis but is hampered by the high cost of isotope-labeled peptides as well as the difficulty of quantitative digestion of proteins in-gel (13).Even a single nano-LC-MS/MS analysis can easily generate a long list of identified proteins with the help of database searching, and additional information can be extracted, such as the hit rank in identification, the probability score, the number of identified peptides per protein, ion counts of identified peptides, LC retention times, and so on. Qualitatively some parameters, such as the hit rank, the score, and the number of peptides per protein (14), can be considered as indicators for protein abundance in the analyzed sample. Among them, the integrated ion counts of the peptides identifying each protein would be the most direct parameter to describe the abundance and has been used to compare protein expression in different states (15). However, a mass spectrometer is not as versatile as an absorbance detector because of limited linearity and possibly because of background and ionization suppression effects (16). Therefore, it is necessary to normalize these parameters to obtain at least approximate quantitative information. The first approach to achieve this, to our knowledge, was to use the number of peptides per protein normalized by the theoretical number of