Rapid proteome profiling using positional signature peptides

蛋白质组定义了细胞在特定状态下表达的全部蛋白质。“蛋白质世界”是一个具有挑战性的研究领域，如果我们要征服这个世界，目前我们使用的是一种基于“分而治之”的策略，将蛋白质组分解成更小的片段，使其易于分析。但是，如果我们通过碎片化来增加蛋白质世界的内在复杂性，难道我们不是让它更难分析吗？乍一看，是的，但假设我们只捕获一个信息丰富的片段，能够报告母体蛋白质-恢复信息变得简单了50倍！这种蛋白质组简化的策略正是我们所建议的。我们已经想出了一种方法，可以使用新的化学技巧将蛋白质组(可能500,000个片段)的复杂性降低到高度信息丰富的子集(可能5,000个片段)。我们现在需要开发和改进我们的方法，并构建匹配的信息学工具，以最有效地利用这一有限的片段集-这些片段中隐藏着丰富的信息。这样的方法对研究蛋白质组的科学家群体来说将是非常有价值的。这种方法简单易用，价格低廉，除了我们在典型蛋白质组实验室中可以找到的复杂仪器外，不需要任何复杂的仪器。它有可能彻底改变我们研究蛋白质组的方式

The proteome defines the entire complement of proteins expressed by a cell in a particular state. The 'protein world' is a challenging area to study, and if we are to conquer this world, currently we use a strategy based on 'divide and conquer', breaking up the proteome into smaller fragments to make them amenable to analysis. But, if we increase the intrinsic complexity of the protein world by fragmentation, aren't we making it even more difficult to analyse? At first glance, yes, but suppose we could capture just one, information rich fragment that was able to report on the parent protein - recovering information just became 50 times easier! This strategy for proteome simplification is exactly what we propose. We have worked out a way to reduce the complexity of a proteome (perhaps 500,000 fragments) to a highly information-rich subset (perhaps 5,000 fragments) using novel chemical tricks. We now need to develop and refine our approach, and build the matching informatics tools to make the most effective use of this limited set of fragments - there is a wealth of information buried in these. An approach such as this would be of great value to the community of scientists who study proteomes. The methodology is simple to deliver, cheap, and requires no sophisticated instrumentation over and above that which we would find in a typical proteomics laboratory. It has the potential to revolutionise the way in which we study proteomes