Introduction: Application of Proteomic Technologies for the Analysis of Microbial Infections

Proteomics belongs to the group of so called “ omics ” technologies that are preferentially exploited for the global analysis of temporal or conditional alterations in gene expression, on either the gene or protein level. Proteomics is focused on proteins and provides information about their abundances, post translational modifi cations, localization and mutual interactions. Current proteomic procedures combine effi cient electrophoretic or chromatographic separation techniques with identifi cation approaches based on mass spectrometry ( MS ) and computer technologies for bioinformatic analysis. It can be said that MS is now the major driving force in the fi eld of proteomics and the quantitative shotgun tandem MS represents a large scale high throughput technology commonly employed for comparative identifi cation and quantifi cation protein studies [1] . The major benefi t of the “ omics ” approaches is the ability to analyze a large number of genes or proteins simultaneously, enabling a more realistic view of a complex cell response to stimuli. The analysis of the global changes in protein profi ling during the interactions between microbial pathogens and their hosts, so called “ infectomics ” , is very attractive area within proteomics. It feeds the study of the fundaments of infections. It solves molecular mechanisms of microbial pathogenesis, helps in the effi cient and rapid diagnosis of infectious disease and the development of novel prophylaxis and treatment strategies. Here, infectomics involves the study of proteins uniquely expressed or up regulated in virulent clinical strains, proteins produced under stress conditions and, fi nally, proteins with immunostimulatory properties. Going deeper into infectomics one deals with structural studies of microbial proteins (to characterize potential post translational modifi cations) and the analysis of protein – protein interactions, the so called “ interactome ” [2] . In this publication we fi rst give an overview on basic proteomic techniques. This introduces the reader into the more specialized studies performed on BSL3 and