Proteomics is a discipline of microbiology and molecular biology that has arisen from the gene sequencing efforts that culminated in the sequencing of the human genome in the last years of the twentieth century. In addition to the human genome, sequences of disease-causing bacteria are being deduced. Although fundamental, knowledge of the sequence of nucleotides that comprise deoxyribonucleic acid reveals only a portion of the protein structure encoded by the DNA. Because proteins are an essential element of bacterial structure and function (e.g., role in causing infection), the knowledge of the three-dimensional structure and associations of proteins is vital. Proteomics is an approach to unravel the structure and function of proteins.

The word proteomics is derived from PROTEin complement to a genOME. Essentially, this is the spectrum of proteins that are produced from the template of an organism's genetic material under a given set of conditions. Proteomics...