Techniques and applications of proteomics in plant ecophysiology

Abstract

Proteins are the tools that make living machines work. They are the single most important molecules that can tell us a lot about life processes. Proteins have long been studied in biochemistry. However, genome wide study of proteins was only possible in recent years due to technological advances and the availability of sequenced genome. Hence, the genome wide study of proteins is called Proteomics. Proteomics is superior over genomics and other OMICS since it can capture post-translational modifications and other chemical changes which other OMICS cannot. This review article discusses on the detailed techniques in proteomics focusing on plant proteomics. It highlights the status of plant proteomics generally and in Africa specifically. It briefly discusses on the role of proteomics in plant ecophysiology studies and finally comes up with concluding remarks.

Keywords: Amino acids, de-novo sequencing, ecophysiology, mass spectrometer, proteins, proteomics.