Is a TOF killing technology on the horizon? TMT32-plex looks official!

We saw a leak to potential investors of one of our field's oldest and most ethical companies stating that a 32-plex was coming. Not a "I SILAC'ed it and TMT'ed it" technology, a real life reagent that would allow you to multiplex 32 samples simultaneously! 

While the expectation is that we'll see real details of these reagents at some thing in Anaheim in June, one core facility is already advertising that they've got it. You might be able to guess which one, but I think it's fair to say that it is really truly real now. 

Short of completely redesigning the tags there are only a couple of ways that this would be able to work, right? And I can't think of a way that you do this without requiring an increase in the relative mass resolution necessary to use the tags. 

For some people this might not be a big deal, right? There will probably be some drawbacks, like the whole "now I have 32x more albumin to deal with instead of 18x more albumin" but for some of us this reagent could be completely transformative. 

This is how we multiplex single cells in our lab (from Eberhard and Orsburn, which should be out any day now) using 2 x 96 well plates for 2 conditions. That leaves us with 16 unused wells per plate, which is what we use for LFQ single cell method development. Anything you see out of our group like the acetic acid preprint or our upcoming miserable work with 20um ID columns, is done using the 16 cell left over from the hundreds of plates we have went through the last 3.5 years. 

32-plex will allow us to switch to using 2 x 384 well plates! 

Now.....you know what is crazy? This actually almost makes it easier for me to automate. I just have to fabricate a new sample deck that will allow me to stack my plates sideways!