Sweet silver: A formaldehyde-free silver staining using aldoses as developing agents, with enhanced compatibility with mass spectrometry

Abstract

Protein detection methods after electrophoresis have to be sensitive, homogeneous, and not to impair downstream analysis of proteins by MS. Speed, low cost, and user friendliness are also favored features. Silver staining combines many of these features, but its compatibility with MS is limited. We describe here, a new variant of silver staining that is completely formaldehyde-free. Reducing sugars in alkaline borate buffer are used as developers. While keeping the benefits of silver staining, this method is shown to afford a much better performance in terms of compatibility with MS, both in PMF by MALDI and in LC/ESI/MS/MS.

References in corpus (5)

• Silver staining of proteins in polyacrylamide gels
• Improvement of the solubilization of proteins in two-dimensional electrophoresis with immobilized pH gradients
• About the mechanism of interference of silver staining with peptide mass spectrometry
• About thiol derivatization and resolution of basic proteins in two-dimensional electrophoresis
• Improved mass spectrometry compatibility is afforded by ammoniacal silver staining

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis in proteomics: A tutorial
• Power and limitations of electrophoretic separations in proteomics strategies
• Silver Staining of 2D Electrophoresis Gels
• The Whereabouts of 2D Gels in Quantitative Proteomics
• Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis in proteomics: past, present and future