"Spot transfer", elution and comigration with known proteins allows accurate transferral of protein identifications between distinct two-dimensional electrophoretic systems.

We report a simple method, designated "spot transfer", where known proteins are excised and eluted from a two-dimensional (2-D) gel run on one gel system to transfer identification of the proteins to a different 2-D gel system by comigration with a comparable sample. In one experiment, 8 of 16 proteins eluted from an isoelectric focusing (IEF) 2-D gel, of the format described for the Cells human keratinocyte database (Cells, J. E. et al., Electrophoresis 1993, 14, 1091-1198), were found to comigrate with proteins in a human T lymphoma (JURKAT) whole cell lysate run using the Millipore Investigator 2-D system. The method should have general utility in allowing the exchange of protein identifications between investigators and could be used to standardize gel loci used in 2-D gel protein databases.