Integrated plant proteomics - putting the green genomes to work

Protein analysis has been at the heart of plant science for many years, but with new questions emerging from an abundance of genomic information and further improvements in technology, there are now new opportunities to undertake large-scale analyses and to move to more complex systems than has been possible previously. This explosion of interest and data is often referred to simply as proteomics, which is the study of the complete set of proteins expressed at a given time and place, the proteome. As its name suggests proteomics is intricately linked to allied technologies such as genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics. In this review of plant proteomics we outline a series of issues that face the practical user, particularly the largest problem that currently faces researchers, the myriad of options to choose from. The choices, problems and pitfalls of entering into gel-based and non-gel-based arraying techniques are discussed together with advances in pre-fractionation of samples, liquid chromatography separations and subcellular analyses. Issues relating to mass spectrometry analysis and the eventual protein identification are outlined, and the dilemmas of data storage and analysis are highlighted. During this tour we provide a series of references to the literature - experimental, theoretical and technical - to illustrate the breadth of current investigations using these techniques.