To begin, wash the isolated small extracellular vesicles or SEVs twice by ultracentrifugation at 110, 000 G and four degrees Celsius for 70 minutes. Re-suspend the vesicles in 500 microliters of phosphate buffered saline or PBS. Then, add five microliters of 100X protease inhibitor to it.
Subject the sample to ultrasonic crushing at 40 watts for 10 minutes, with three second ultrasonic time, and five second interval time. Centrifuge the crushed mixture at 13, 700 G for 15 minutes at four degrees Celsius. To the obtained supernatant, add dithiothreitol to a final concentration of 50 millimolar.
And incubate it in a water bath at 56 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. Then add 50 microliters of one molar iodoacetamide to the supernatant. And allow it to react at room temperature for 20 minutes in the dark.
Centrifuge the mixture at 13, 700 G and four degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. And transfer the supernatant containing the crude peptide extract to a 10 kilodalton ultracentrifuge tube. Remove protein from the crude peptide by centrifuging the ultra filtration tube at 13, 700 G and four degrees Celsius for one hour.
Dry the collected effluent in a vacuum centrifugal concentrator at 45 degrees Celsius. For desalting, use mass spectrometry grade pure water as a solvent for all reagents. First, dissolve the dry peptides in 100 microliters of 0.1%trifluoracetic acid or TFA, and keep it aside.
Then add 100 microliters of pure acetonitrile to each desalting column. Centrifuge the columns at 400 G for three minutes at room temperature, and discard the effluent. Then add 100 microliters of 50%acetonitrile per desalting column, and repeat the centrifugation as mentioned previously before discarding the effluent.
Next, add 100 microliters of 0.1%TFA to each desalting column before centrifuging as mentioned previously. Once again, discard the effluent. Now, pipet the desalt peptides into the desalting column.
Centrifuge the columns as mentioned previously to load the sample. Add the recovered effluent back to the desalting column to repeat the loading. Then, add 100 microliters of 0.1%TFA.
Centrifuge as mentioned previously, and discard the effluent. Finally, add 50 microliters of 50%acetonitrile containing 0.1%TFA to the peptide in the desalting column. After centrifusion, as mentioned previously, collect the effluent in a new mass spectrometry grade centrifuge tube.
