Current status and advances in quantitative proteomic mass spectrometry

Abstract

The accurate quantitation of proteins and peptides in complex biological systems is one of the most challenging areas of proteomics. Mass spectrometry-based approaches have forged significant in-roads allowing accurate and sensitive quantitation and the ability to multiplex vastly complex samples through the application of robust bioinformatic tools. These relative and absolute quantitative measures using label-free, tags, or stable isotope labelling have their own strengths and limitations. The continuous development of these methods is vital for increasing reproducibility in the rapidly expanding application of quantitative proteomics in biomarker discovery and validation. This paper provides a critical overview of the primary mass spectrometry-based quantitative approaches and the current status of quantitative proteomics in biomedical research.

Figure 1

Relationship between the peptide ion content and the difficulty in obtaining sufficient MSMS information to both identify and also quantitate those peptides. Adapted from Michalski et al. [10] and Liu et al. [11].