Feature Review Papers in Proteomes

Dear Colleagues,

Proteomics as an identifiable discipline is between 25 and 40 years old, depending on who one asks, but one might suggest it to be a discipline that has yet to fulfil its promise.

While great advances have been made in techniques and technologies, the complete coverage and quantification of all proteoforms in a proteome would still appear to be in the distant future. Current methodologies for analyzing the diversity of proteoforms leverage evolving rather than revolutionary technologies, despite how welcome a genuine, quantitative revolution might be. Nonetheless, proteoforms, despite being the key to understanding fundamental molecular mechanisms and thus providing new biomarkers and drug targets, do not lend themselves to ‘high-throughput’ analyses. Thus, it is time to meaningfully reflect on the current state of proteomics, its genuine objectives, and intimate relationship to inter-related fields, including glycoproteomics, lipoproteomics, metabolomics, interactomics, bioinformatics, and, in the end, systems biology to celebrate all that has been achieved. Nonetheless, rather than stopping at the celebration, it is very much time for the field to critically reflect on the practical effect of those achievements and ask very hard, direct questions about what is stopping proteomics from being a more broadly implemented research approach.

This Special Issue targets the critical observations and opinions of the engaged scientists who have contributed to driving the field to its current state and status, and who thus wish to see it advance accordingly. We have asked that they document the progress, reflect on the achievements, and objectively discuss the future demands and realistic critical expectations of the field within the next 5–10 years, and thus, its potential impact on biomedical, agricultural, and environmental states. More importantly, though, we want these scientists to tell us what is ‘wrong’ with the field of proteomics and what we should be doing better, even if the opinions are controversial or not immediately achievable with our current resources. Speculation is warranted to drive innovation in unpredictable and productive directions. We thus do not necessarily want these reviews and opinions to be ‘balanced’ but rather to openly reveal, for our full consideration, all the things that need to be said and critically evaluated to further enable the most productive and meaningful future research.

Prof. Jens Coorssen
Dr. Matthew P. Padula
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Proteomes is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.