Mass spectrometric approaches for characterizing bacterial proteomes.

The emergence of advanced liquid chromatography mass spectrometry technologies for characterizing very complex mixtures of proteins has greatly propelled the field of proteomics, the goal of which is the simultaneous examination of all the proteins expressed by an organism. This research area represents a paradigm shift in molecular biology by attempting to provide a top-down qualitative and quantitative view of all the proteins (including their modifications and interactions) that are essential for an organism's life cycle, rather than targeting a particular protein family. This level of global protein information about an organism such as a bacterium can be combined with genomic and metabolomic data to enable a systems biology approach for understanding how these organisms live and function.