Bioinformatic tools for proteomic data analysis: an overview

Over the years the identification of one gene or protein has been substituted by the determination, in a single experiment, of all the genes or proteins expressed in a given cellular state. Consequently, the amount of available data has increased considerably. In this scenario, bioinformatics has become the bridge between experimental data and computational tasks for managing, mining and retrieving information. The current paper provides an overview on the bioinformatic databases and software used to analyze the biological meaning of proteomic data, thus describing the main functions and limitations of these tools. The important challenges of data analysis are mainly related to the integration of biological information from dissimilar sources. In this field, the improvement in databases and developments in software in the future would contribute to the potential opportunities given by proteomics.