Enrichment and desalting of tryptic protein digests and the protein depletion using boron nitride

• Protein tryptic digests were desalted and enriched utilizing hexagonal boron nitride.
• Phosphopeptides were desalted with high recovery rates.
• Boron nitride exhibits high wettability allowing fast sample preparation.
• Boron nitride shows protein depletion capability applied for peptide purification.

Sample preparation still remains a great challenge in modern bioanalysis and the interest in new efficient solid phase extraction (SPE) materials still remains high. In this work, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is introduced as a new SPE material for the isolation and enrichment of peptides. The h-BN is isoelectronic and structurally similar to graphite. It has remarkable properties including good thermal conductivity, excellent thermal and chemical stability and a better oxidation resistance than graphite. BN attracts increasing interest because of its wide range of applicability. In the present work, the great potential of h-BN, as a new SPE-material, on the enrichment, preconcentration and desalting of tryptic digest of model proteins is demonstrated. A special attention was dedicated to the efficient enrichment of hydrophilic phosphopeptides. Two elution protocols were developed for the enrichment of peptides compatible for subsequent MALDI-MS and ESI-MS analysis. In addition, the recoveries of 5 peptides and 3 phosphopeptides with wide range of pI values utilizing h-BN materials with different surface areas were investigated. 84–106% recovery rate could be achieved using h-BN materials. The results were compared with those obtained using graphite and silica C18 under the same elution conditions, and lower recoveries were obtained. In addition, h-BN was found to have a capability of protein depletion, which is requisite for the peptide profiling.

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