AUTOMATION OF MICRO-PREPARATION AND ENZYMATIC CLEAVAGE OF GEL ELECTROPHORETICALLY SEPARATED PROTEINS

To achieve high throughput, protein microcharacterization sample prepa ration must be automated, We describe a cartesian robot capable of pro cessing 32 protein samples in parallel, The system is based on special ly designed flow-through reactors for contamination-free reagent deliv ery and removal, Washing of excised gel pieces, reduction and alkylati on, proteolytic cleavage and peptide extraction are performed in these reactors, Compatibility of the system with HPLC peptide separation an d Edman degradation as well as with laser desorption mass spectrometry of the unseparated mixture is demonstrated, This is the first report describing automated preparation and processing of multiple protein sa mple.