Proteomics in Animal Science

Abstract Text: The ultimate goal of proteomics is to detect and quantify the tens of thousands of proteins from a specific cell, tissue, or fluid. To observe protein expression, location, interaction, and modification under different experimental conditions would aid the understanding of the molecular mechanisms critical for cellular functions. In the context of animal health, better understanding of cellular functions would be the basis for rational therapeutic designs to target pathogens and correct disease conditions.  The unique advantage of this technology is that a fairly large number of proteins can be identified and quantitated at one time, without any prior knowledge that any specific protein might exist in a sample. Analyzing a proteomic dataset can often lead to surprising results, and the unexpected may be the most interesting observation. In fact, most shotgun proteomic experiments are not typical “hypothesis driven” experiments, but may be better described as experiments designed to find a hypothesis. In these experiments hundreds if not thousands of proteins can be identified whose expression is altered by a defined experimental condition. Some changes in protein expression observed in a proteomics experiment may be expected and even well characterized. However, some may be unexpected or unknown and lead to new hypothesis for the connections between protein expression and cellular processes.  Utilization of this technology with its potential for discovery, balanced with its limitations, is a useful tool in animal health research.

Keywords: porteomics