Proteins, Proteomics, and Patterns

Proteins are the functional units of a cell. They have constantly changing expression levels, locations, and PTMs that may be associated with the onset, progression, and remission of disease. Proteomic technologies (as described in Section 2) are used to detect patterns of differentially expressed proteins that have numerous potential clinical applications. Techniques such as 2D-PAGE and HPLC combined with MS can be used to identify proteins for early detection, diagnosis, prognosis, and response to treatment. 

Whereas past techniques for studying proteins, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, were a slow and laborious process of examining one protein at a time, the currently used proteomic analyses of thousands of proteins simultaneously rapidly displays results in terms of protein patterns. The mass spectra generated by analyzing clinical samples from healthy and 

Technology Performance Characteristics for Different Mass Spectrometers 

FT-ICR Very High Very High Higher Slow 

Reflectron (high-end) High High High Fast 

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