Comprehensive Human Red Blood Cell Membrane and Cytoplasmic Proteome Analyses

Red blood cells (RBCs) are essential to human and involved in many clinical disorders. Many proteomics studies have been done on human RBCs, but the coverages are insufficient, limiting full understanding of protein profiles in RBCs and the mechanisms of their involved diseases. With major advances now available in the mass spectrometry-based proteomics filed, here we have isolated human RBCs into the membrane and cytoplasmic fractions and performed extensive offline basic pH RPLC fractionation followed by proteomic analyses. This in-depth proteomics approach has identified 4777 proteins in the RBC membrane fraction and 2350 proteins in the cytoplasmic fraction, yielding 5264 proteins in total which is probably the largest human RBC proteomics scale in the field. Such comprehensive RBC proteome datasets provide valuable data resource for elucidation of human RBCs and their involved diseases.