An overview of proteomic approaches for farm animal research

摘要

Proteomics has been used now for several decades and it is considered as a fast-evolving technology. Novelties are directly linked with new features in mass spectrometry and automation. Proteomics aims at identifying and quantifying large numbers of proteins expressed in a particular system: detection of disease markers, study of posttranslational modifications, cataloguing the highest number of proteins present in a cell type, analysing the interactions between cell compartments, and many other biological questions can be addressed and the panel of techniques used to reach the goal are numerous (Lottspeich et al, 2010). While the first 2D gels performed in the seventies allow resolving few hundreds of proteins from E. coli, nowadays the number of detected proteins has been drastically increased and considerable progress has been made for their identification and/or characterization. However, researchers are still facing many challenges: complexity of the samples, reproducibility, quantitative analysis, dynamic aspects and so on. For example, highly abundant proteins (such as albumin) can hide those that are present in lower amount but being essential such as transcription factors; salts used during the extraction steps or in culture medium can also bring problems in gels but also in the mass spectra...Another aspect that should be considered is the availability of protein sequences in public databases, that can create difficulties.