Two-dimensional Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis (2-DE / 2D-PAGE) Technology

Two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (DE / 2D-PAGE) is considered a powerful tool for proteomics work. It is used for separation and fractionation of complex protein mixtures from biological samples. 2D-PAGE separates proteins depending on two different steps: the first one is called isoelectric focusing (IEF) which separates proteins according to isoelectric points (pI); the second step is SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) which separates proteins based on the molecular weights. Thus, thousands of proteins can be separated, and the information about IEF and molecular weights can be obtained. 2D-PAGE is a widely used method for protein analysis with the ability to separate thousands of proteins at one time. It can provide direct visual information of changes in protein/post-translational modifications (PTMs) abundance. It can also be used to other analysis, such as whole proteome analysis, detection of biomarkers, drug discovery, and so on.