Proteomics is the study of the complete set of proteins that is expressed at a given time in a cell, tissue, organ or organism, i.e. the proteome. Proteins are the machinery of the cell, responsible for performing the functions essential for cells to operate, survive, grow and divide. Proteins are also e.g. responsible for relaying signals or messages within and between cells that drive biological and metabolic processes. In addition, proteins are the main constituent of the physical structures of cells and organism.
There is a general interest to proteomics in life sciences since as compared to e.g. genomics/functional genomics, proteomics is able to give a much more complete understanding of the studied biological system. Due to events like alternative splicing and post-translational modifications (like phosphorylation, glycosylation, ubiquitinylation, myristyolation, palmityolation etc.), the number of different proteins expressed in an organism is by far greater than the number of its functional genes. The expression level of functional proteins is regulated at many post-transcriptional levels, like the action of inhibitory RNA species, protein localization and degradation, in addition, post-translational modifications, like phosphorylations, can have the role of switching an inactive protein to active. Due to this reasons, simple mRNA transcript measurements by functional genetics may give a biased reading of the actual protein activity.
In most cases, changes at protein level determine the differences between sickness and health and can be used to monitor the progression of a disease. Almost all drugs on the market and being developed act by trying to alter a protein (mal)function. Therefore, typically one of the first steps in the drug discovery project is the identification and validation of the protein target(s) or markers associated with a disease (one type of biomarkers).
Our expertise in proteomics
We offer our customers a wide spectrum of proteomics expertise and services. Our services are based on nanoLC-MS/MS and other instrumentation platforms, coupled with bioinformatics and computational systems biology. The samples can be fluids, like serum, plasma, urine, cell lysates or solid tissue samples as well as processed samples like SDS gel plugs.
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