Abstract
The Escherichia coli proteome is the most extensively characterized and studied of all prokaryotic proteomes. Despite this, large scale bacterial proteomics experiments performed on E. coli cells grown in liquid cultures have failed to identify key virulence factors thought to be important determinants in establishing bacterial infections. It seems likely that many important determinants associated with virulence and host cell adhesion are exclusively expressed during growth in biofilms, which can be crudely mimicked on solid media. This method describes a simple workflow to characterize the unique proteome signature of individual, isolated single colonies, using E. coli K12 strain grown on solid media as a model system. The workflow thus provides a means to explore the proteomes of minimally passaged clinical isolates of bacteria grown on primary culture plates and to identify both unique and differentially expressed proteins contained therein. Value of the method: - Simple mass spectrometry-based proteomics workflow to characterise the proteome of single colony forming units - Enables exploration of the proteomes of minimally passaged clinical isolates from primary culture plates - Identification of virulence factors expressed in true or mimicked biofilms that may be missed in liquid cultures Method name: E. coli single colony proteome analysis.