Protein profiling is an increasingly valuable tool for the characterization of protein populations and has been used to identify microorganisms, most often using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by mass spectrometry. We present a rapid method for the identification of viruses using microfluidic chip gel electrophoresis (CGE) of high-copy number proteins to generate unique protein profiles. Viral proteins are solubilized, fluorescently labeled and then analyzed using the μChemLab™ CGE system (∼10 min overall). A Bayesian classification approach is used to classify the reproducible and visually distinct protein profiles of MS2 bacteriophage, Epstein-Barr, Respiratory Syncytial, and Vaccinia viruses as well as discriminate between closely related T2 and T4 bacteriophage.
