Accurate Mass Measurements in Proteomics
To understand different aspects of life at the molecular level, one would think that ideally all components of specific processes should be individually isolated and studied in details. Reductionist approaches, i.e., studying one biological event at a one-gene or one-protein-at-a-time basis, indeed have made significant contributions to our understanding of many basic facts of biology. However, these individual “building blocks” can not be visualized as a comprehensive “model” of the life of cells, tissues, and organisms, without using more integrative approaches.1,2 For example, the emerging field of “systems biology” aims to quantify all of the components of a biological system to assess their interactions and to integrate diverse types of information obtainable from this system into models that could explain and predict behaviors.3-6 Recent breakthroughs in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics are making this daunting task a reality.7-14 Proteomics, the systematic study of the entire complement of proteins expressed by an organism, tissue, or cell under a specific set of conditions at a specific time (i.e., the proteome), has become an essential enabling component of systems biology. While the genome of an organism may be considered static over short timescales, the expression of that genome as the actual gene products (i.e., mRNAs and proteins) is a dynamic event that is constantly changing due to the influence of environmental and physiological conditions. Exclusive monitoring of the transcriptomes can be carried out using high-throughput cDNA microarray analysis,15-17 however the measured mRNA levels do not necessarily correlate strongly with the corresponding abundances of proteins,18-20 The actual amount of functional proteins can be altered significantly and become independent of mRNA levels as a result of post-translational modifications (PTMs),21 alternative splicing,22,23 and protein turnover.24,25 Moreover, the functions of expressed proteins can also be extensively modified by PTMs26-31 or by their interactions with other biomolecules or small molecules.32,33 Thus, it is highly desirable that proteins, the primary functional macromolecules involved in almost all biological activities, can be studied directly and systematically to determine their diverse properties and interplay. Such proteome-wide analysis is expected to provide a wealth of biological information, such as sequence, quantity, PTMs, interactions, activities, subcellular distribution and structure of proteins, which is critical to the comprehensive understanding of the biological systems. However, the de novo analysis of proteins isolated from cells, tissues or bodily fluids poses significant challenges due to the tremendous complexity and depth of the proteome, which necessitates high-throughput and highly sensitive analytical techniques. It is therefore not surprising that mass spectrometry (MS) has become an indispensable technology for proteome analysis.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Environmental Molecular Sciences Lab. (EMSL)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 915303
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-52331; CHREAY; 12695; 400412000; TRN: US200817%%447
- Journal Information:
- Chemical Reviews, 107(8):3621-3653, Vol. 107, Issue 8; ISSN 0009-2665
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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