Mass spectrometric detection of tissue proteins in plasma

It has long been thought that blood plasma could serve as a window into the state of one's organs in health and disease because tissue-derived proteins represent a significant fraction of the plasma proteome. Although substantial technical progress has been made toward the goal of comprehensively analyzing the blood plasma proteome, the basic assumption that proteins derived from a variety of tissues could indeed be detectable in plasma using current proteomics technologies has not been rigorously tested. Here we provide evidence that such tissue-derived proteins are both present and detectable in plasma via direct mass spectrometric analysis of captured glycopeptides and thus provide a conceptual basis for plasma protein biomarker discovery and analysis.