Proteomics today: Bioinformatics at its best. Proteomics and bioinformatics - An inseparable couple

摘要

Proteomics is one of the most rapidly evolving fields in natural science since the early 1990s when Marc Willdns introduced this term. It encompasses the techniques used to screen and determine the proteins produced by the DNA of a cell [1]. From the very beginning, proteomics has been closely connected with protein separation via gels or chromatography and protein detection via Edmann sequencing or mass spectrometry (see overview [2] and [3]). In particular, the use of mass specrrometfy leads to enormous amounts of data that - once generated - have to be analysed and stored. In consequence, databases such as UniProtKB/SwissProt [4], NCBI or IPI have been developed, search engines such as Mascot, Sequest and Phenyx have been written and data handling systems such as Mascot Integra, ProteinScape, PRIDE have been created. From the very beginning, Proteomics and Bioinformatics belong together like Laurel and Hardy.