Advances in Proteomic Analysis: Focus on Bioinformatics

Proteomics technologies generate dauntingly large amounts of heterogeneous data types, and thus, are highly dependent on, and integrated with, informatics.  This session will cover a broad range of topics in Bioinformatics related to Proteomics.  Laboratory information management systems (LIMS), image analysis systems and databases are needed for generation and maintenance of proteomics data.  Data and image storage systems are needed in addition to "encyclopedia" type systems that catalog results.  Fundamental questions regarding formats for data exchange and storage as well as architectures for archiving public proteomics data are still being formulated.  Simple aggregation of proteomics data as well as the more challenging integration of datasets both within proteomics and between proteomics and other disciplines (genomics, metabolomics) are still in their infancy.  A broad range of specialized tools are needed for analysis of proteomics data, including statistical analysis and pathway mapping. Finally to fully exploit the data to advance our knowledge and understanding of biology we need new intelligent systems to aid data interpretation and hypothesis generation.  As the proteomics and bioinformatics communities focus their efforts on develping the necessary computational and informatics infrastructure,  a rapidly growing open source effort has arisen to more effectively address the need for standards and new computational tools.