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The proteome is the complement of proteins expressed by an organism, tissue or cell type. Proteomics, the study of proteomes, has been defined as the characterisation of patterns of gene expression at the protein level or defined more widely as the link between proteins and genomes. Proteomics encompasses many different approaches to protein study, from bioinformatics of protein content of genomes to large scale direct protein analysis of complicated protein mixtures, and the definition of a protein's properties, their interactions and modifications.
An important aspect of proteomics is to identify proteins with altered levels of expression. Changes in protein expression levels are associated with disease states, drug treatment, cellular stress, genetic manipulation or changes in metabolism. The qualitative and cell mapping aspects of proteomics permit the discovery of novel proteins and provide details of others, for example their sub-cellular location, time of expression as well as details of protein interactions, protein networks within the cell and modifications to proteins. These details can provide clues about the biological function of proteins.
Just having the knowledge of the structure of a protein will not be sufficient to understand its function since many protein functions are carried out in dynamic regions of proteins that may not have a well defined structure. Clearly, Proteomics will require a substantial effort well into the forseeable future and will require effort on several fronts, including protein structure determination on a genomic scale, coordinated efforts to characterize biochemical function and efforts aimed at determining protein expression levels.