The
lysis and extraction of soluble bacterial proteins from cells is a
common practice for proteomics analyses, but insoluble bacterial biomasses
are often left behind. Here, we show that with triflic acid treatment,
the insoluble bacterial biomass of Gram<sup>–</sup> and Gram<sup>+</sup> bacteria can be rendered soluble. We use LC-MS/MS shotgun
proteomics to show that bacterial proteins in the soluble and insoluble
postlysis fractions differ significantly. Additionally, in the case
of Gram<sup>–</sup> Pseudomonas aeruginosa, triflic acid treatment enables the enrichment of cell-envelope-associated
proteins. Finally, we apply triflic acid to a human microbiome sample
to show that this treatment is robust and enables the identification
of a new, complementary subset of proteins from a complex microbial
mixture
