ABSTRACT Proteomics is an advanced approach that aims to characterize a large number of proteins (proteome) in a single assay, or single experiment. As opposed to single protein analysis using antibody-based techniques, such as western blotting, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and fluorescent microscopy, proteomics offers a valuable opportunity to study proteins “in bulk” in order to draw a clearer picture of the molecular biology of healthy and/or diseased cells. This review discusses the fundamentals of proteomics with respect to proteome complexity, reducing sample complexity by fractionation and separation methods, and protein identification based on peptide-mass and/or amino acid sequence. This review also presents a number of common proteomics workflows, the combination of some of which is likely to reveal larger proteome coverage. Both proteomics and transcriptomics enable researchers to comprehensively study the dynamic biological activities of living cells. However, each one of them has its limitations and advantages; therefore, combining the two approaches has the potential to better elucidate cellular biological processes.
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