Effect of quality characteristics of single sample preparation steps in the precision and coverage of proteomic studies—A review

Proteomic profiling and biomarker search are analytical tools as many other. Nevertheless, in the proteomic discovery phase considerable sample fractionation is inevitable before readout. Since these procedures are of notable complexity, proteomic tools need in particular analytical quality validation standards as prevail for other analytical methods. With acceptance of the rule of error propagation the values of imprecision and yield of each preparation step determine overall reproducibility and therewith information harvest of a propagated method series. Thereto, we examined recent proteomic reports with reproducibility data and with parallelization, and automation approaches. Based on the data available from literature it is highly probable, that at least a part of current proteomic platforms actually suffer from high technical variance.