Multiple spotting due to protein speciation might increase a protein's chance of being captured in a random selection of 2-DE spots. We tested this expectation in new (PXD015649) and previously published 2-DE/MS data of porcine and human tissues. For comparison, we included bottom-up proteomics studies (BU-LC/MS) of corresponding biological materials. Analyses of altogether ten datasets proposed that amino acid modification fosters multispotting in 2-DE. Thus, the number of 2-DE spots containing a particular protein more tightly associated with a peptide diversity measure accounting for amino acid modification than with an alternative one disregarding it. Furthermore, every 11th amino acid was a post-translational modification candidate site in 2-DE/MS proteins, whereas in BU-LC/MS proteins this was merely the case in every 21st amino acid. Alternative splicing might contribute to multispotting, since genes encoding 2-DE/MS proteins were found to have on average about 0.3 more transcript variants than their counterparts from BU-LC/MS studies. Correspondingly, resolution completeness as estimated from the representation of transcript variant-rich genes was higher in 2-DE/MS than BU-LC/MS datasets. These findings suggest that the ability to resolve proteomes down to protein species can lead to enrichment of multispotting proteins in 2-DE/MS. Low sensitivity of stains and MS instruments appears to enhance this effect.
K E Y W O R D Salternative splicing, post-translational modification, protein abundance, protein species, twodimensional gel electrophoresis Abbreviations: AS, Alternative splicing; 2-DE/MS, 2-DE followed by mass spectrometry; BU-LC/MS, bottom-up proteomics based on liquid chromatography coupled to MS; IEF, isoelectric focussing; ∆PD, extent to which post-translational modifications increase peptide diversity; FA, formic acid; FDR, False discovery rate; GO, gene ontology; N TV , number of transcript variants per gene; PD, peptide diversity with modifications disregarded; PMI, post-translational modification index; PTM, post-translational modification; RT, room temperature; TPM, transcripts per million.