Proteomic studies in plants

Proteomics is a leading technology for the high-throughput analysis of proteins on a genome-wide scale. With the completion of genome sequencing projects and the development of analytical methods for protein characterization, proteomics has become a major field of functional genomics. The initial objective of proteomics was the large-scale identification of all protein species in a cell or tissue. The applications are currently being extended to analyze various functional aspects of proteins such as post-translational modifications, protein-protein interactions, activities and structures. Whereas the proteomics research is quite advanced in animals and yeast as well as Escherichia coli, plant proteomics is only at the initial phase. Major studies of plant proteomics have been reported on subcellular proteomes and protein complexes (e.g. proteins in the plasma membranes, chloroplasts, mitochondria and nuclei). Here several plant proteomics studies will be presented, followed by a recent work using multidimensional protein identification technology (MudPIT).