Graphene as excellent support for rapid and efficient near infrared-assisted tryptic proteolysis

A rapid and efficient tryptic proteolysis approach has been developed by combining graphene with near infrared (NIR)-assisted protein digestion. Based on the unique properties of graphene such as strong absorption ability of electromagnetic radiation over a wide range of wavelengths and excellent thermal conductivity, we developed a novel fast NIR-assisted tryptic digestion method using graphene, allowing the entire time for identification of protein to be greatly reduced. Bovine serum albumin (BSA), myoglobin (Myo), lysozyme (Lys) and cytochrome c (Cyt-c) were denatured with a digestion time as short as 3s. Peptide fragments were identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Equivalent or better digestion efficiency was observed comparing to current in-solution digestion methods. This novel graphene-based NIR-assisted digestion approach may provide a promising proteomic identification technique to biomedical and clinical research.