A Cuban Blog on Bioinformatics and Proteomics
Yasset Perez-Riverol, who works as a bioinformatician in Cuba, contacted us by email to mention his informative blog that our readers may enjoy. Below we provide links to couple of his commentaries. Please feel free to give feedback to him here or in his blog.
Celebrating Ten Years of Mann and Aebersolds Mass spectrometry-based proteomics review
In 2003 Mann & Aebersold reviewed on the pages of Nature the challenges and perspectives of the then-nascent field of MS-based proteomics. Mass spectrometry (MS) has since entrenched itself as the method of choice for analyzing complex protein samples, and MS-based proteomics has become an indispensable technology for interpreting genomic data and performing protein analyses (primary sequence, post-translational modifications (PTMs) or proteinprotein interactions).
“The ability of mass spectrometry to identify and, increasingly, to precisely quantify thousands of proteins from complex samples can be expected to impact broadly on biology and medicine.”
The manuscript by Mann & Aebersold is one of the most cited manuscripts in the field of MS proteomics, For this reason is one of the core papers in the field of proteomics and computational proteomics, outlining most of the basic concepts required to understand the fundamentals of this discipline.
Why R for Mass Spectrometrist and Computational Proteomics
Why R:
Actually, It is a common practice the integration of the statistical analysis of the resulted data and in silico predictions of the data generated in your manuscript and your daily research. Mass spectrometrist, biologist and bioinformaticians commonly use programs like excel, calc or other office tools to generate their charts and statistical analysis. In recent years many computational biologists especially those from the Genomics field, regard R and Bioconductor as fundamental tools for their research.
R is a modern, functional programming language that allows for rapid development of ideas; it is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.The rich set of inbuilt functions makes it ideal for high-volume analysis or statistical studies.
We find it quite fascinating that scientific researchers from around the world are using the internet to get connected to each other and share ideas without going through the journals acting as intermediaries. That means there will be a continuum in the modes of communications and all scales, ranging from short tweets all the way up to journal publications in highly polished languages, will be seen as viable means of communication.
