What are some of the technologies used in proteomics research?
Traditionally, proteomics experiments have been done using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DE), a process by which large mixtures of proteins are separated by electrical charge and size. In the first dimension, the proteins migrate through a gel-like substance until they are separated by their charge; for the second dimension, they are transferred to a second semi-solid gel and are separated by size. The advantage of this method is that a large number (3,000 to 10,000) proteins can be visually separated. The drawback is that certain kinds of proteins such as membrane proteins, proteins present in very small amounts, or very large or very small proteins are difficult or impossible to visualize by 2DE. In the last ten years or so, mass spectrometry (MS) has increasingly become the method of choice for analyses of complex protein samples. Mass spectrometry is a technique that measures two properties: the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of a mixture of ions (particles with an electric cha
