Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have developed a new method for identifying specific proteins in whole cell extracts of microorganisms by using mass spectrometry-based peptide fingerprinting.

The new method involves growing bacteria in a medium that enriches for a protein of interest. The protein of interest can then be analyzed using a MALDI-TOF mass spec without going through the costly and time-consuming process of separating proteins out on a 2D gel, the researchers said.