Advances of ionic liquids-based methods for protein analysis

Ionic liquids (ILs) as promising solvents have been quickly designed and applied in many areas spanning from electrochemistry, energy, chemical synthesis and catalysis to pharmaceutics. In recent ten years, with the advantages of good thermal stability, high chemical stability and strong dissolving power, ILs have also been good alternative to traditional organic and inorganic solvent for protein analysis, especially for large-scale proteomic studies. Herein, we present a critical overview of the advances of ILs for protein analysis. We give major coverage to applications of ILs in protein solubility, stability, refolding, extraction, crystallization, as well as large-scale proteomics analysis, and discuss the application potential of ILs still needed to be studied. We also comment on promising trends for ILs in proteome and interactome. (c) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.