Abstract: The analysis of membrane proteins is still a technical obstacle in proteomic investigation. A fundamental question is how to allow the hydrophobic proteins fully solubilizing in a proper solvent environment. We propose that the denatured membrane proteins in high denaturant solution are fully ionized and separated through ion exchange chromatography. The membrane proteins prepared from a mouse liver were dissolved in 4 mol/L urea, 20 mmol/L Tris-HCl buffer (pH 9.0), and loaded onto a tandem chromatography coupled with Q-Sepharose FF and Sephacryl S-200HR. With a linear NaCl gradient elution, the bound proteins were eluted and collected followed by sodium-dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) to further separate the eluted proteins. The protein bound on SDS-PAGE were excised and in-gel digested by trypsin, while the digested peptides were delivered to reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ion-trap mass spectrometry for the peptide identifications. Of a total of 392 proteins identified, 306 were membrane proteins or membrane associated proteins reported by literature. Based on the calculation of hydrophobicity, the GRAVY (grand average of hydropathicity) scores of 83 proteins are over or equal to 0.00. Taking all the evidence, we have established an effective approach which is feasible in the investigation towards mouse liver membrane proteomics.

Key words: membrane protein, mouse liver, multidimensional ion-exchange chromatography, reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), sodium-dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS)