This post is devoted to brief explanation of what proteomics and iteratomics are. It’s the sum of my studies for the exam of bionalytical proteomics and interatomics. Under cut there is a short explanation with the mind map, containing most required information about proteomics.

Proteomics — is the large-scale study of proteins, particularly their structures and functions. It is the science about the structure of protein, how it appears and exists in the cell. If you want to study its interaction with other proteins and cell parts, it’s called interatomics. And mostly it is about how to spot interactions using fluoroscent markers. Have you seen these Discovery programmes where they show pictures of some protein traveling through the body of mouse? That is what interatomics about.

So how do they study proteins? Mostly they study parts of protein — peptides, because just watching through really good microscope won’t help, cause proteins are too small for that. But we can separate proteins from each other using different techniques (based on size, pH, affinity, hidrophobicity, etc..), than cut them into peptides (or not cut, if we are using different approach). Than we can use mass spectrography to detect the structure. Mass Spectrography, or MS shortly, is the process when peptides (or proteins) are being ionized and then directed through electromagnetic field, so we can detect thier Time Of Flight (TOF) or thier charge and mass, so we can find out mass, charge (and mass/charge ratio) and the speed of ion and thus detect what ion was it.

There are 2 major ways to do it: ESI (Electrospray Ionization tandem MS) and MALDI (Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization –Time of Flight) and if the first one is about spraying the solvent of target molecules to the electromagnetic screen, the second is about directing the laser for the solution with target, which is much more interesting (though their perfomance is comparable and ESI in some cases)

Mind Map for Proteomics and Interatomics for dummies

Of course, there is a mind map for proteomics and interatomics with short explanation of differenet terms. All credit for the information goes to my teacher dr. Elisa Michelini. Enjoy!