Bioinformatic analysis of proteomics data

Most biochemical reactions in a cell are regulated by highly specialized proteins, which are the prime mediators of the cellular phenotype. Therefore the identification, quantitation and characterization of all proteins in a cell are of utmost importance to understand the molecular processes that mediate cellular physiology. With the advent of robust and reliable mass spectrometers that are able to analyze complex protein mixtures within a reasonable timeframe, the systematic analysis of all proteins in a cell becomes feasible. Besides the ongoing improvements of analytical hardware, standardized methods to analyze and study all proteins have to be developed that allow the generation of testable new hypothesis based on the enormous pre-existing amount of biological information. Here we discuss current strategies on how to gather, filter and analyze proteomic data sates using available software packages.