One of the challenges of the proteomic analysis by 2D-gel is to visualize the
low abundance proteins, particularly those localized in organelles. An
additional problem with nuclear proteins lies in their strong interaction with
nuclear acids. Several experimental procedures have been tested to increase, in
the nuclear extract, the ratio of nuclear proteins compared to contaminant
proteins, and also to obtain reproducible conditions compatible with 2D-gel
electrophoresis. The NaCl procedure has been chosen. To test the interest of
this procedure, the nuclear protein expression profiles of macrophages and
dendritic cells have been compared with a proteomic approach by 2D-gel
electrophoresis. Delta 2D software and mass spectrometry analyses have allowed
pointing out some proteins of interest. We have chosen some of them, involved
in transcriptional regulation and/or chromatin structure for further
validations. The immunoblotting experiments have shown that most of observed
changes are due to post-translational modifications, thereby a exemplifying the
interest of the 2D gel approach. Finally, this approach allowed us to reach not
only high abundance nuclear proteins but also lower abundance proteins, such as
the HP1 proteins and reinforces the interest of using 2DE-gel in proteomics
because of its ability to visualize intact proteins with their modifications
