Lights, Camera, Action! systematic variation in 2-D difference gel electrophoresis images.

2-D Difference gel electrophoresis (DIGE) circumvents many of the problems associated with gel comparison via the traditional 2-DE approach. DIGE's accuracy and precision, however, is compromised by the existence of other significant sources of systematic variation, including that caused by the apparatus used for imaging proteins (location of the camera and lighting units, background material, imperfections within that material, etc.). Through a series of experiments, we estimate some of these factors, and account for their effect on the DIGE experimental data, thus providing improved estimates of the true relative protein intensities. The model presented here includes 2-DE images as a special case.

Two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis.

Two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2D DIGE) is a modified form of 2D electrophoresis (2DE) that allows one to compare two or three protein samples simultaneously on the same gel. The proteins in each sample are covalently tagged with different color fluorescent dyes that are designed to have no effect on the relative migration of proteins during electrophoresis. Proteins that are common to the samples appear as 'spots' with a fixed ratio of fluorescent signals, whereas proteins that differ between the samples have different fluorescence ratios. With the appropriate imaging system, DIGE is capable of reliably detecting as little as 0.5 fmol of protein, and protein differences down to +/- 15%, over a >10,000-fold protein concentration range. DIGE combined with digital image analysis therefore greatly improves the statistical assessment of proteome variation. Here we describe a protocol for conducting DIGE experiments, which takes 2-3 d to complete.

Drosophila ventral furrow morphogenesis: a proteomic analysis.

Ventral furrow formation is a key morphogenetic event during Drosophila gastrulation that leads to the internalization of mesodermal precursors. While genetic analysis has revealed the genes involved in the specification of ventral furrow cells, few of the structural proteins that act as mediators of ventral cell behavior have been identified. A comparative proteomics approach employing difference gel electrophoresis was used to identify more than fifty proteins with altered abundance levels or isoform changes in ventralized versus lateralized embryos. Curiously, the majority of protein differences between these embryos appeared well before gastrulation, only a few protein changes coincided with gastrulation, suggesting that the ventral cells are primed for cell shape change. Three proteasome subunits were found to differ between ventralized and lateralized embryos. RNAi knockdown of these proteasome subunits and time-dependent difference-proteins caused ventral furrow defects, validating the role of these proteins in ventral furrow morphogenesis.