Basic Techniques Used for Studying Proteomics

The state-of-the-art biological mass spectrometric soft-ionization technologies (matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) electrospray ionization (ESI)) facilitate the routine characterization of proteins. Those two ionization methods are integrated with several differention analyzers to form a variety of mass spectrometers. 

MS has been used to characterize 2DGE- and LC-separated human pituitary proteins and DEPs that are related to human pituitary adenomas [2,12,15-17]. PTMs of proteins are also important to study. MS/MS effectively characterizes the PTMs and determines the modified sites. LC-ESI-qlT MS/MS has been used to identify the phosphorylation [18] and nitration sites [19-21] of proteins in the human pituitary proteome. A human pituitary proteome reference database has been established in our laboratory [12,15], many tumor-related proteins were identified [2,17]. And the primary structure and PTMs of pituitary proteins were MS-characterized [2,12,15-21], Those data could contribute to the basic and clinical research studies of human pituitary tumors. Moreover, novel protein chip-based MS technology [22] might eventually be used for the screening, diagnostics, and therapeutics of human pituitary diseases. 

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