Interactome Mapping: Using Protein Microarray Technology to Reconstruct Diverse Protein Networks

Uzoma, Ijeoma; Zhu, Heng

A protein microarray, also termed a protein chip, is created by immobilization of thousands of different proteins (e.g., antigens, antibodies, enzymes and substrates, etc.) in discrete spatial locations at high density on a solid surface [6] . Depending on their applications, protein microarrays can be categorized into two varieties: analytical and functional protein microarrays. Analytical protein microarrays are usually composed of well-characterized biomolecules with specific binding activities, such as antibodies, to analyze the components of complex biological samples (e.g., serum and cell lysates) or to determine whether a sample contains a specific protein of interest [7] . They have been used for protein activity profiling, biomarker identification, cell surface marker/glycosylation profiling, clinical diagnosis and environmental/food safety analysis [8] [9] [10] . Alternatively, functional protein microarrays are constructed by printing a large number of individually purified proteins and are mainly used to comprehensively query biochemical properties and activities of those immobilized proteins. In principle, it is feasible to print arrays composed of virtually all annotated proteins of a given organism, effectively comprising a whole-proteome microarray [11] .