These protocols have a serious limitation. Just as the Census Bureau's methods lead to the undercounting of certain population groups, the protocols lead researchers to under-identify whole classes of proteins. But clever strategies to attack this problem are starting to appear. Two papers published this month unveil chemistry-based methods that help recognize phosphorylated proteins.1,2 And a paper published last month presented a process to uncover many traditionally overlooked proteins.3
Phosphorylation is a central event in many biological processes, so why are researchers only now finding ways to study it proteomically? "One now has fast, effective mass spectrometric ways for identifying proteins that really only matured in the last few years," says Brian T. Chait, director of the mass spectrometry and gaseous ion chemistry lab at Rockefeller University and senior author of one of this month's papers.1 Ruedi Aebersold, senior author of the other paper2 and a professor at the Institute ...
