Biological Variation of the Platelet Proteome in the Elderly Population and Its Implication for

Knowledge about the extent of total variation experienced between samples from different individuals is of great importance for the design of not only proteomics but every clinical study. This variation defines the smallest statistically significant detectable signal difference when comparing two groups of individuals. We isolated plate-lets from 20 healthy human volunteers aged 56–100 years because this age group is most commonly encountered in the clinics. We determined the technical and total varia-tion experienced in a proteome analysis using two-dimen-sional DIGE with IPGs in the pI ranges 4–7 and 6–9. Only spots that were reproducibly detectable in at least 90 % of all gels (n 908) were included in the study. All spots had a similar technical variation with a median coefficient of variation (cv) of about 7%. In contrast, spots showed