Biomotif AB has introduced its new pI-Trap™ åcelus system for fully automated, gel-free, isoelectric and mass spectrometry (MS) compatible fractionation of peptides and proteins in biomarker discovery research. This has been developed jointly by Biomotif and the Karolinska Institutet, and Biomotif have partnered with Spark Holland to develop the auto sampling and fraction collection capabilities. Electrospray ionisation MS analysis of peptides and proteins occurs in the liquid phase. The pI-Trap åcelus rapidly fractionates peptides and proteins in solution, and provides an orthogonal separation to hydrophobicity-based HPLC. At the heart of the system is Biomotif’s multi-junction capillary isoelectric focusing (MJ-CIEF) pI-Cell™. After isoelectric focusing, a carrier buffer mobilises the focused proteins towards the fraction collector. This process can cause band broadening of any residual proteins. The Biomotif pI-Cell enables recursive re-focusing after every fraction collection step, to counteract any band broadening effects. This technology allows up to 30 (re-focused) fractions to be collected automatically, while preserving the advantages of the primary isoelectric separation and all in about one hour.
