Data Treatment in Food Proteomics

Abstract

Food proteomics can be defined as the large-scale analysis of the proteins in a particular biological food system. Proteomics includes not only the study of the structure and function of proteins but also the quantification of their abundance, the interactions between them, their intracellular location and the analysis of protein modifications. This powerful -omics methodology is achieving a large impact in the research community of modern food science. In fact, a new discipline called foodomics that studies food and nutrition domains through the application of -omics technologies has been reported. The recent successes of proteomic methodologies make them an encouraging strategy for food science studies, where research institutions, industries, agencies and regulatory laboratories are combining efforts to acquire the needed knowledge of composition, quality and safety on food products. In fact, proteins can act as ideal molecular indicators of a characteristic food/nutritional state or condition in food science. Currently, mass spectrometry (MS), mainly matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF) and electrospray-ion trap (ESI-IT) MS, has been recognized as an indispensable tool to detect multiple features of a complex protein sample for the majority of proteomics studies. Moreover, the bioinformatics treatment of MS data has increased the scale of proteomics tools, representing a powerful strategy for high-throughput protein and peptide identification and quantification