Editorial pubs.acs.org/jpr
Plant Proteomics Coming of Age
W
ith a rising world population and the increasingly visible effects of climate change on ecosystems and agriculture, enhancing agricultural productivity will be essential to providing sufficient food. Plant proteomics has become an important tool in plant, agricultural and biofuel research of not only plant model systems, in particular Arabidopsis thaliana, but also a variety of crop species, including rice and maize. This special issue on plant proteomics illustrates the growing capacity of proteomics to identify, quantify and characterize large sets of proteins in a singular study. These developments are in particular the result of improved and novel mass spectrometers and proteomics strategies, combined with the availability of more complete plant genome sequences. In particular, large scale targeted and untargeted quantitative proteomics has been driven by the increased sensitivity, accuracy and throughput of instruments such as the LTQOrbitrap mass spectrometer and the latest generation of triple quadrupole instruments. This special issue includes 15 original proteomics articles and 4 reviews on plant proteomics research. Two of the review articles concern salt and flood stress, which is particularly important for crops that receive irrigation. The third review concerns the response of the plant organelles to abiotic stress. The original articles show a wide range of photosynthetic species and topics illustrating that proteomics and mass spectrometry have matured as techniques and have become mainstream. However, many challenges remain to make proteomics and mass spectrometry more effective tools, including (i) obtaining more complete coverage of complex proteomes, (ii) improving protein quantification in particular for low abundant proteins, and (iii) providing more complete analysis of the large variety of protein modifications. Several of the articles address and illustrate these technological challenges, including the detection of phosphorylated tyrosines using targeted proteomics and measurements of protein turnover rates using metabolic labeling of proteins. We believe that this special issue on plant proteomes reflects the current standing of plant proteomics and also illustrates that proteomics helps to identify genes influencing desirable traits in agriculture, ultimately contributing to solutions for improved plant productivity. Setsuko Komatsu*† Klaas J. van Wijk*‡ † National Institute of Crop Science/University of Tsukuba, Japan ‡
■
Department of Plant Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Authors
*
[email protected];
[email protected] Special Issue: Microbial and Plant Proteomics Published: December 13, 2011 © 2011 American Chemical Society
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/pr2011999 | J. Proteome Res. 2012, 11, 2−2
