Proteomics Technology

Mass spectrometry based proteomics is a revolutionary technology for the study of human disease. This technology has a wide-variety of applications. One of these applications is the high-throughput rapid and accurate identification of thousands of proteins present within a complex biological specimen.

Like microarray technology, proteomics offers an unbiased discovery approach to understanding diseased tissue. Proteomics, however, is in many ways a more subtle and powerful approach because of myriad possibilities for the fractionation of proteins prior to proteomic analysis and the capability of proteomics to study post-translational modification of proteins. For example, below is a figure demonstrating the detection of ubiquitinated ubiquitin in a muscle biopsy sample from a patient with inclusion body myositis.

The range of methods used for mass spectrometry based proteomics can be found in numerous medical publications.

Publications and Links

• Search PubMed for free full-text reviews of proteomics
• The Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics Proteomics Core
• The Children’s Hospital Boston Proteomics Center