We have performed a detailed characterization and identification of wheat gluten proteins obtained from the Teal variety of Canadian hard red spring wheat. RP-HPLC separation of the sample into 35 fractions has reduced the spectral complexity; this was followed by MALDI mass spectrometry (MS), which showed the presence of six or fewer resolved protein components above 20 kDa in each RP-HPLC fraction, giving a total of 93 MS resolved peaks. These included 17 peaks in the w-gliadin fractions (FI-4), 12 in the high molecular weight (HMW) glutenin subunit fractions (F5-8),59 in the a-and l3-gliadins and low molecular weight (LMW) glutenin subunit fractions (F9-31) and 5 peaks in the v-gliadin fractions (F32-35). Peptide maps of tryptic digests of HPLC fractions were obtained from a tandem quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MALDI QqTOF MS) and were submitted to the ProFound search engine. HMW glutenin subunits including Ax2*, Dx5, Bx7, and Dyl0 (consistent with the known profile of Teal), and LMW glutenin subunits including six from group 3 type II and 1 from group 2 type 1, were identified with reasonable sequence coverage from HPLC fraction 5, 7} 17} and 18. The identities of the peptides attributed to selected gluten proteins were confirmed using MS/MS with BioMultiView to match the predicted and measured partial amino acid sequences. Because of incomplete wheat DNA databases, many wheat gluten proteins could not be identified. These results suggest that the combination of RP-HPLC with MS and MS/MS techniques is a promising approach for the characterization of wheat gluten proteins. . The complexity of these patterns can be attributed to the presence of two or three sets of homologous chromosomes in durum and common wheat} respectively, and to additional polymorphism related to mutation of gluten protein genes into many allelic forms [3]. Gliadin patterns have been extensively used to provide definitive identification of all but the most closely genetically related varieties [1]. Specific peaks or patterns, particularly those of the HMW glutenin subunits, have been Address reprint requests to Dr. W. Ens, TOF Laboratory, 506 Allen Bldg, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada. E-mail: ens@cc.umanitoba.ca associated with differences in processing performance among wheat classes and varieties, allowing their use as quality markers [4][5][6][7].There are several difficulties associated with proteomic analysis of wheat storage proteins, including the limited databases available, the limited number of basic residues (particularly in the LMW glutenin subunits), the complexity resulting from the presence of sets of homologous proteins} and the presence of repeating motifs. In spite of this, wheat proteins have been widely studied using HPLC It. 8], and mass spectrometry techniques are now widely applied alone or in combination with other chromatographic techniques in proteomic studies of wheat [9][10][11][12]. Previous studies have established that MALDI-TO...