title: Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia. Snake venomics from a 26-year old polyacrylamide focusing gel.
abstract: A 26-year-old dried polyacrylamide gel, cast in presence of an immobilized pH gradient and containing focused proteins from the venoms of a northern black-tailed rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus molossus), and of a western diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) has been screened in order to see the feasibility of extracting the proteins, analyzing them by mass spectrometry (MS) and assessing their integrity. Nine gel bands were excised along the pH 3-10 gradient and the gel segments reswollen in warm acetonitrile. Upon digestion and MS analysis, all the bands could be identified and attributed to the respective venoms of the two rattlesnake species. Although a few peptides exhibited modified amino acids, the proteins were found to be well preserved even upon such a long storage at room temperature. The present data suggest the feasibility of identifying proteins from very old samples trapped in polyacrylamide gels, and analyzed in a pre-mass spectrometry era, thus of uncertain identity.
authors: Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering Giulio Natta, Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milano, Italy. piergiorgio.righetti@polimi.it
authors: Pier Giorgio
authors: PG
authors: Righetti
authors: Bruno
authors: B
authors: Lomonte
authors: Juan J
authors: JJ
authors: Calvete
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020552:Comet Assay / Q000379:methods; D003435:Crotalid Venoms / Q000737:chemistry*; D017839:Crotalus; D013058:Mass Spectrometry; D040901:Proteomics / Q000379:methods; D013045:Species Specificity; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D003435:Crotalid Venoms