Asthma is increasing in prevalence worldwide as a result of factors associated with a Western lifestyle. However, simple and reliable diagnostic and prognostic markers are yet to be found. In an attempt to identify
protein biomarker profiles among small molecular weight ranges, we employed an approach combining liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry, instead of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE), which has previously been used to analyze
protein expression patterns. Here we described its application to compare plasma
peptides from control and chronic
asthma mice.
Peptides were quantitatively profiled as a multidimensional
peptide mass fingerprint by a combination of reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and matrix-assisted
laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. They were identified by
peptide mass fingerprinting using matrix-assisted
laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight/time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry. In this study, we quantitatively identified the fragment f of
complement 3 (C3f), which is important in
inflammation. C3f was significantly higher in controls than chronic
asthma mice. Our strategy allowed the detection and identification of different plasma
peptides between control and chronic
asthma mice on a proteomic scale. Therefore, these results suggest that native small
peptides detected by non-2-DE techniques may be useful and specific
biomarkers of disease.