A quantitative and qualitative method for direct 2-DE analysis of murine cartilage.

Direct 2-DE analysis of cartilage is difficult due to the high proteoglycan content. Proteoglycan removal before IEF may however cause the partial or total loss of specific proteins making this approach ineffective when quantitative data are required to investigate protein expression differences. Thus, we have developed a 2-DE method including passive rehydration loading that does not require sample pretreatment and allows direct protein expression studies in cartilage samples.