What is mass spectrometry?

http://www.asms.org/whatisms/p1.html

What is a proteome and what is proteomics?

A proteome is the protein profile (composition and quantitation) of a cell, tissue or organism under defined conditions.  Proteomics is any large scale or systematic characterization of the proteome of a cell, tissue,or organism.  It can be classified as global proteomics (the study of all proteins present in a cell, tissue or organism) and targeted proteomics (the study of a subproteome, e.g. organelles, protein groups and complexes).

Why proteomics research? 

Of the many reasons, here are a few of the major ones:

• The level of gene expression does not often represent the amount of active protein in a cell. The correlation between mRNA levels and altered protein expression was only 0.48 in certain cases (Electrophoresis 1997, 18, 533-537).

• Gene sequence does not describe posttranslational modifications which are essential for the function and activity of a protein.

• Genomics does not describe dynamic processes on the protein level and genes are “scripts” while proteins are the actual “actors”.

• Technical advances in protein fractionation, such as IPG strip for 2 D gel electrophoresis, liquid phase isoelectric focusing, multidimensional chromatography, and mass spectrometery (high sensitivity, high resolution and high throughput) especially have greatly facilitated proteomics research.