In spite of the powerfulness for the simultaneous study of proteome expression and post-translational modification, 2-D PAGE has inevitable limitation on detect low aboundant proteins. Since many of the low abundant proteins are likely to have very important regulatiory functions in cells, separation and analysis of low copy number proteins is an important issue in proteome studies and challenge for 2-D techniques. Among various methods developed to detect low abundant proteins, electrophoretic protein prefractionation, chromatographic protein prefractionation, and subcellular fractionation are explained in this paper. Their practical strengths and weaknesses are also explained with current research trends.