ABSTRACT

The proteome — the sum of all proteins present in a cell at a certain time — in contrast to the static genome, is dynamic and is the final result of transcription and translation regulation processes as well as post-translational regulatory mechanisms, such as modification/demodification and proteolysis. Owing to this feature, proteome analysis is a potent tool for monitoring the adaptation processes of cells in response to changing environmental conditions. Important prerequisites for this approach, among others, are the availability of sufficient amounts of homogeneous sample material; high-resolution protein separation techniques that ideally are unbiased with respect to such physicochemical protein properties as isoelectric point or hydrophobicity; detection methods able to cope with the vast dynamic range of proteins in a single cell (106 up to 109-fold for plasma and serum proteins [27]); and fast and reliable means of protein identification. A number of recent reviews detail these challenges and summarize the current methodological state-of-the-art [25,37].