Universal pretreatment development for low-input proteomics using lauryl maltose neopentyl glycol

In recent years, there has been a growing demand for low-input proteomics, particularly in the context of single-cell proteomics (SCP). In this study, we have developed a lauryl maltose neopentyl glycol (LMNG)-assisted sample preparation (LASP) method. This method effectively reduces protein and peptide loss in samples by incorporating LMNG, a surfactant, into the digestion solution and subsequently removing the LMNG simply via reversed phase solid-phase extraction. The advantage of removing LMNG during sample preparation for general proteomic analysis is the prevention of mass spectrometry (MS) contamination. When we applied the LASP method to the low-input SP3 method and on-bead digestion in co-immunoprecipitation-MS, we observed a significant improvement in the recovery of the digested peptides. Furthermore, we have established a simple and easy sample preparation method for SCP based on the LASP method (scpLASP) and identified a median of 1,175 proteins from a single HEK239F cell using liquid chromatography (LC)-MS/MS with a throughput of 80 samples per day.