Protein isolation from ear wax made easy

Cerumen is a waxy substance with a mixture of different lipids and and not yet identified proteins. Analysing ear wax can be quite laborious because of the different and sometimes interfering components. Therefore, time-consuming techniques such as chromatography or spectrometry were used to gain informations about the components of ear wax. Conclusions were drawn from immunohistochemical detections of special proteins within the skin or the glands of the external ear canal about the existence of these proteins within the ear wax. But directly analysing the proteins within the ear wax was difficult. We, therefore, worked out a method to isolate proteins from ear wax. Ear wax was collected from 16 adults with no infections of the external ear canal. The protein isolation was conducted using the Qproteome™ Mammalian Protein Prep Kit by Qiagen in two different kind of ways (cell and lysat fraction). Afterwards, we performed a quantification of the total protein concentration using the BCA method. There was a statistical significant difference in the total protein concentration between the two different (cell and lysat fraction) described ways. Furthermore, it is a fast and easy method to extract proteins from ear wax. The benefit of the described method and the field of application will be discussed.