Thanks to the dramatic advances in biotechnology, bioinformatics and analytical

chemistry we are starting to unveil all the molecular structures of living systems.

The full characterization of biomolecules will have a huge impact on medicine, where

improved diagnosis and prognosis of diseases as well as the discovery of new drugs

are envisioned.

        After sequencing the genomes of several organisms (373 genomes, April 27 2006,

www.genomesonline.org) the scientific community has moved to proteomics. This turn

is mainly the consequence of three main issues:

1. The necessity to complement genomic information. Genetic information is heavily

processed starting from differential splicing of mRNA molecules and continuing at

protein level where posttranslational modifications, interactions with inhibitors/activators,

differential localization and variable concentration are the ultimate factors responsible

for the biological actions encoded in the genome. Thus, proteins need to be characterized

in order to gain full potential of genomic information.

2. Advances in Bioinformatics and Mass Spectrometry. The emergence of bioinformatic

tools (as online database search) of peptide mass fingerprinting, MS/MS sequence retrieval

and the emergence of shotgun proteome digestions opened a reasonable high throughput

manner to identify proteins. In addition, advances in instrumentation as two-dimensional

chromatography coupled with ion-traps, q-Tof, Tof-Tof or FT-MS mass spectrometers gave

the necessary tool to start big scale analysis of proteins.

3. Maturity of genomic technologies.  Even though DNA sequencing projects are a long

way to be finished, and some analytical step must be improved, the efficiency has reach an

reasonable throughput and sensitivity to move the attention towards the next technological

challenge.

     It is interesting to have these points in mind since the next shift to another "omics" is

going to be when points 1-3 are fulfilled for proteomics: metabolomics??