Standardization of Sample Preparation for Two-Dimensional Electrophoresis of Cryptosporidium parvum Sporozoites

Cryptosporidium is an important parasite of human and animals that belongs to the group Apicomplexa. However, the organism diverges from other Apicomplexa in several important aspects such as its unusual host location, atypical developmental biology, unique metabolism and recently described relict mitochondria. All or some of these unique features may be responsible for the lack of effective therapeutic agents against this parasite. The recent completion of genome sequence projects for C. parvum and C. hominis facilitated postgenomic investigations including proteomic analysis. Sample preparation is the first important step for any proteomic analysis. In this study we have attempted to develop the suitable sample preparation protocol for successful two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) of Cryptosporidium sporozoite proteins prior to mass spectrometry. The 2-DE gels were analysed by automated image analysis software and number of protein spots were used as the indicator for maximum protein extraction from Cryptosporidium sporozoite samples. Keywords: Proteomics, Cryptosporidium, Two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE), SolubilizationDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjm.v24i2.1255 Bangladesh J Microbiol, Volume 24, Number 2, December 2007, pp 119-124