CPSA Digest 2002

Proceedings -Tuesday, October 8, 2002

TuOD

Instrumentation for Protein Characterization – Emerging Trends in Proteomic Analysis

Introduction

Proteomics has been defined as:

"...the use of quantitative protein-level measurements of gene expression to characterize biological processes … and decipher the mechanisms of gene expression control. As such, proteomics focuses on the dynamic description of gene regulation and, by doing so, offers something much more powerful than a protein equivalent of DNA databases… proteomics emphasizes quantitation and the assembly of large bodies of experimental observations in numerical databases." - N. L. Anderson & N. G. Anderson, "Proteome and proteomics; New Technologies, New Concepts and New Words," Electrophoresis 19 (1998) 1853- 1861.

"...the systematic analysis of protein functions and expression patterns in tissues and involves the isolation, separation, identification and functional characterization of the proteins in an organism." - MDS Proteomics web site (www.mdsproteomics.com)

"...not the study of proteins one by one, as has traditionally been done, but in an automated, large scale manner." - S. Borman, "Proteomics: Taking over where genomics leaves off", C&E News, 31 July 2000.

"...the large-scale study of proteins, usually by biochemical methods." - A. Pandey & M. Mann, "Proteomics to study genes and genomes," Nature 405 (2000) 837-845.

"These are the four requirements [for Proteomics]: complex protein samples, possibility of quantitation, very large dynamic range, and a reasonable throughput. If not, it's protein chemistry." - P. Roepstotff, Prof. of Protein Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark.

"...the systematic analysis of the proteins expressed by a cell or tissue and mass spectrometry is the essential tool." - S.P. Gygi and R. Aebersold, "Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics," Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 4 (2000) 489-494.

And yet... "We've been doing proteomics since we could put more [than] 50 amino acids together. Proteomics is the measurement of proteins; it's been going on for a long time." - Anonymous, Biotech Rumor Mill (www.biofind.com), 17 September 2002.

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