Establish and maintain 2D gel quality within your lab

Since the release of Progenesis SameSpots v4.1 including the SpotCheck workflow, we’ve generated more information to show how you can apply it to gain confidence in running 2D gels for proteomics.

If you’re not familiar with Progenesis SpotCheck already, there is a short video introducing what it is and how it works, using a story of two new post docs trying to run 2D-gels as good as the demanding Professor Green, shown here.

An application note also shows a real example of how SpotCheck was used to set 2D gel quality within a lab and teach novices how to confidently attain this level before running large experiments with limited sample.

These were the applications people saw an immediate use for when we trialled the SpotCheck workflow, but there are more emerging. For example, one group is using it to check the stability of a proteomics standard they want to share with our community. Hopefully, we’ll be able to provide published results in the future, but in the meantime, we’d love to hear how you think it can help you.

We’ve also had enquiries about how to obtain the protocols and protein sample used in the 2-DE reproducibility study that was presented as a poster at HUPO 2010 in Sydney. If you’d like to try your hand at running 2D gels and compare results to the same gold standard as the other 20 labs in this study, then here’s what you’ll need:

1. Purchase HeLa Cell Lysate sample at a special price from CILBiotech using these details.
2. Run 2D-gels according to the study protocol available from The Fixing Proteomics Campaign here.
3. Download Progenesis SameSpots and request a copy of the gold standard used in the study. Then you can compare your own images against it using Progenesis SpotCheck. If you’re not sure how to do this, then try our online tutorial first.

This is a good way of introducing yourself to running 2D gels, with the benefit of having a quantitative measure of your 2D gel quality compared to other labs.

I hope this helps you see the potential benefits of Progenesis SpotCheck and encourages you to share how you can use it in your lab.