I have performed in-gel digestion protocol for Mass Spectrometry sample prepration and stored the trypsin digested gel and supernatant in -20C. Can the sample be stored for 1 week in such conditions without having a negative effect on my MS results?
Hi Avni,
I think that shouldn't be an issue. Did you stop the digestion (by adding acid, for example)?
Usually, I remove the supernatant after digestion and add excess acetonitrile to the gel piece to shrink it and extract all the generated peptides. Then I take that acetonitrile supernatant, add it to the original aqueous supernatant and evaporate all solvent so that my sample digest is dry. This can then be stored in the freezer and you can reconstitute the sample again in a suitable solvent when you're ready for analysis.
Hope this helps; good luck!
If it is just a week it should not be a problem, assuming you have not thawed the samples in between. You should avoid repeated freeze thaw cycles.
In case you face a similar situation in future, it is best advised that you should dry your extracts and then store them, which you can store for quite a long time (months to 1 year).
In general it should be quite stable in -20. Although different chemical entities have different stability profile. Solvent composition and pH of the sample are also crucial to determine the stability. Best would be to do a stability analysis study of your analyte using MS. Thats why its also a crucial parameter to validate a method accourding to FDA guidelines.
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