Fine separation of protein isoforms with alternative development in two-dimensional electrophoresis

Earlier, we had developed a new two-dimensional electrophoresis procedure, which could show high resolution for tubulin microheterogeneity. The present study was conducted to characterize this electrophoretic method by comparing its resolution with the common two-dimensional electrophoresis of O'Farrell. The results have shown that our method is superior to that of O'Farrell's in the separation of proteins with close isoelectric points. Moreover, a further application was tested by using native-gel electrophoresis in the first dimension and isoelectric focusing (IEF) in the second dimension. This method provided useful information on protein components involved in intact protein. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.