"The peak of demand for those skilled in this field is yet to come," says Enrique Dalmasso, manager of Fremont, Calif.-based Ciphergen Biosystems' biomarker discovery center, because companies and research labs are just starting to ramp up, as are many pharmaceutical firms that are developing their own internal proteomics groups. Three types of companies lay claim to being involved in proteomics: tools and instrumentation firms, contract service companies, and information database firms. Instrumentation firms like BioRad Laboratories of Hercules, Calif., supply two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, Applied Biosystems of Foster City, Calif., provides mass spectrometers, and Ciphergen offers protein arrays. These tools variously separate and classify proteins by their electrical charge, weight, and binding affinities. The contract service companies such as Large Scale Biology of Vacaville, Calif., and Genomic Solutions of Ann Arbor, Mich., offer services for separating and identifying proteins. And then there are the information database firms such as Celera ...
Career Paths in Proteomics
Graphic: Leza BerardoneThis is the beginning," pronounced J. Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics in Rockville, Md., at a press conference at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in February. "There [are] 30,000 genes, and up to one-quarter of a million proteins [encoded by them] in 100 trillion different combinations--that's how many cells we have. That's why we don't think this is the blueprint for humanity; it's the starting point of understanding how t
Written byKaren Young Kreeger
| 6 min read
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