Modern biopharmaceutical and proteomic laboratories perpetually seek to improve the speed, sensitivity and reproducibility of protein analysis. To this end, significant advances have been made in chromatography and mass spectrometry instrumentation. However, in virtually all cases, the protein sample must be treated in some way before it can be processed by these sophisticated machines. In fact, sample preparation is a critical first step in the analytical process, allowing sensitive hardware to accommodate diverse proteins presented in highly variable matrices.