A mass spectrometric strategy for absolute quantification of Plasmodium falciparum proteins of low abundance

Selected reaction monitoring mass spectrometry has been combined with the use of an isotopically labelled synthetic protein, made up of proteotypic tryptic peptides selected from parasite proteins of interest. This allows, for the first time, absolute quantification of proteins from Plasmodium falciparum. This methodology is demonstrated to be of sufficient sensitivity to quantify, even within whole cell extracts, proteins of low abundance from the folate pathway as well as more abundant "housekeeping" proteins.