FIG. 4.

Classical approaches for the identification and quantification of protein corona components. (a) SDS-PAGE (sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis) followed by protein staining allows for multi-protein identification. Tryptic digest of single bands and subsequent LC-MS (liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry) analysis enables the identification of single proteins. (b) Trypsinized corona proteins can also be directly analyzed by LC-MS. With subsequent data processing and proteomic analysis, besides single-protein identification also label-free quantification is possible. MW-marker, molecular weight-marker. Nanoparticle–protein complexes (b) are created with BioRender.com.