Affinity-based proteomics probes; Tools for studying carbohydrate- processing enzymes

As more information becomes available through the efforts of high-throughput screens, there is increasing pressure on the three main 'omic' fields, genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, to organize this material into useful libraries that enable further understanding of biological systems. Proteomics especially is faced with two highly challenging tasks. The first is assigning the activity of thousands of putative proteins, the existence of which has been suggested by genomics studies. The second is to serve as a link between genomics and metabolomics by demonstrating which enzymes play roles in specific metabolic pathways. Underscoring these challenges in one area are the thousands of putative carbohydrate-processing enzymes that have been bioinformatically identified, mostly in prokaryotes, but that have unknown or unverified activities. Using two brief examples, we illustrate how biochemical pathways within bacteria that involve carbohydrate-processing enzymes present interesting potential antimicrobial targets, offering a clear motivation for gaining a functional understanding of biological proteomes. One method for studying proteomes that has been developed recently is to use synthetic compounds termed activity-based proteomics probes. Activity-based proteomic profiling using such probes facilitates rapid identification of enzyme activities within proteomes and assignment of function to putative enzymes. Here we discuss the general design principles for these probes with particular reference to carbohydrate-processing enzymes and give an example of using such a probe for the profiling of a bacterial proteome. © 2009 CSIRO.