Small but more than enough: Proteins are detected in solution without additional amplification or labeling steps by using a small molecule as a reporter of the protein (see picture, Am-tag=amplification tag). The combination of self-assembled monolayers on gold with matrix-free laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry offers ultrahigh sensitivity with a detection limit of several attomoles.
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Lee et al. (2008) studied this question.
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