William C.S. Cho, a,
aDepartment of Clinical Oncology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong, China
Available online 22 September 2007.
Proteomics is the study of proteins and their interactions in a cell. With the completion of the Human Genome Project, the emphasis is shifting to the protein compliment of the human organism. Because proteome reflects more accurately on the dynamic state of a cell, tissue, or organism, much is expected from proteomics to yield better disease markers for diagnosis and therapy monitoring. The advent of proteomics technologies for global detection and quantitation of proteins creates new opportunities and challenges for those seeking to gain greater understanding of diseases. High-throughput proteomics technologies combining with advanced bioinformatics are extensively used to identify molecular signatures of diseases based on protein pathways and signaling cascades. Mass spectrometry plays a vital role in proteomics and has become an indispensable tool for molecular and cellular biology. While the potential is great, many challenges and issues remain to be solved, such as mining low abundant proteins and integration of proteomics with genomics and metabolomics data. Nevertheless, proteomics is the foundation for constructing and extracting useful knowledge to biomedical research. In this review, a snapshot of contemporary issues in proteomics technologies is discussed.
Key words: proteomics; mass spectrometry; protein chip
2003年4月人类基因组图谱基本绘制完成，但对基因的调节与功能问题仍未能解读。由于基因的功能主要是通过其编码的蛋白质来实现，蛋白质才是生命活动真正的执行者，所以越来越多的科学家致力于蛋白质的研究，试图找出人类疾病的致病机理，最终解决人类的疾病。
研究蛋白质的技术也越来越多，也日趋成熟。质谱技术由于具有极高的灵敏度而成为蛋白质组研究的核心工具，是目前蛋白质组研究技术中最具活力和潜力的技术。例如收集低丰度的蛋白以及更充分的利用基因组和元基因组数据库的分析；还有目前大规模分离蛋白质的最有效的方法—双向聚丙烯酰胺凝胶电泳；液体套色版；同位素标签；表面放大激光法以及蛋白质芯片技术等等。这些都为生物医学研究和提取有用信息提供了研究方法，高通量的蛋白质组学技术结合先进的生物信息学分析广泛应用在基于蛋白途径的疾病分析信号的识别。
但是由于蛋白质的研究不同于DNA以及RNA，它常有更为复杂的二级，三维结构；另一方面蛋白质不能像DNA那样可以扩增，因此少量的蛋白很难被检测到，这些都给我们的研究带来了很大的困难。
尽管如此，蛋白质组学研究已在医学领域中显示出其广泛的应用前景，而且其技术及应用还在不断突破中。通过蛋白质组研究，将为人们更完整地提示生长、发育和代谢调控等生命活动的规律和严重疾病的发生机制，为人类进行疾病的诊断防治和新药开发提供重要的理论基础。
