What is 2-D gel electrophoresis?
Two-dimensional protein gel electrophoresis (2-D) is a technique for separating the components of a complex protein mixture on an acrylamide gel in two dimensions, based on isoelectric point (pI) and molecular weight (MW). Depending on the sample complexity, a 2-D gel can resolve as much as 10-fold more polypeptides than an equivalent SDS PAGE gel. 2-D PAGE analysis provides a high-resolution map of protein complexity (e.g. isoforms, splice variants), post-translational modifications (PTMs) and relative abundance.