ABSTRACT
How close are we to using proteomics tools in the every day practice of physicians? What are the socio-economical issues our health care system may face with the advent of biomarkers for early diagnosis? How to get the specialists from the various disciplines integrated in proteomics to establish a common understanding of the clinical issues and develop the necessary standards (methods, biochemicals and IT)? These were the kind of questions a panel of specialists tried to answer during the roundtable discussion that took place in Bern during the Swiss Proteomics Society 2004 congress.
Subject(s)
Proteomics/methods , Automation , Biomarkers/metabolism , Computational Biology , Genetic Testing , Humans , Mass Spectrometry/methods , Proteomics/trends , Social Class , SwitzerlandABSTRACT
After the success of the mass spectrometry (MS) round table that was held at the first Swiss Proteomics Society congress (SPS'01) in Geneva, the SPS has organized a proteomics application exercise and allocated a full session at the SPS'02 congress. The main objective was to encourage the exchange of expertise in protein identification, with a focus on the use of mass spectrometry, and to create a bridge between the users' questions and the instrument providers' solutions. Two samples were sent to fifteen interested labs, including academic groups and MS hardware providers. Participants were asked to identify and partially characterize the samples. They consisted of a complex mixture of peptide/proteins (sample A) and an almost pure recombinant peptide carrying post-translational modifications (sample B). Sample A was an extract of snake venom from the species Bothrops jararaca. Sample B was a recombinant and modified peptide derived from the shrimp Penaeus vannamei penaeidin 3a. The eight labs that returned results reported the use of a wide range of MS instrumentation and techniques. They mentioned a variety of time and manpower allocations. The origin of sample A was generally identified together with a number of database protein entries. The difficulty of the sample identification lay in the incomplete knowledge of the Bothrops species genome sequence and is discussed. Sample B was generally and correctly identified as penaeidin. However, only one group reported the full primary structure. Interestingly, the approaches were again varied and are discussed in the text.
