For these reasons, the advent of whole cell bacterial analysis has been hailed as an important development. For some electrospray MS analyses, the whole analysis can take as little as 10 minutes. This has applications in many fields, including the detection of biological warfare agents and the study of diseases. Working with E. coli strains K12 and 11775, which have been extensively characterized, the harvested cells are pelleted, washed, lyophilized and suspended in the standard solvent acetonitrile-aqueous trifluoroacetic acid. 40 Peaks are tentatively assigned.
Several factors come into play.
All detected proteins originate in the cytosol. The proteins are characterized by high abundance within the cell, strong basicity and moderate hydropathicity. The average hydropathicity index of the detected proteins is lower than the average for all E. coli proteins, i.e. the detected proteins tend to be more hydrophilic. Yes, you did read that right. Particle bean and corn voltages are two of the novel terms that I have met in the mass spectrometric literature in the last couple of years.