IEF-2DE Analysis and Protein Identification

Abstract

Isoelectric focusing followed by SDS-PAGE (IEF-2DE) separates proteins in a two-dimensional matrix of protein pI (Protein Isoelectric Point) and molecular weight (MW). The technique is particularly useful to distinguish protein isoforms (Radwan et al., 2012) and proteins that contain post-translational modifications such as phosphorylation (Oh et al., 2012) and lysine acetylation (Wu et al., 2011). Proteins that are separated by IEF-2DE can be identified by immunoblot analysis using sequence-specific antibodies or by mass spectrometry.