SPOTLIGHT REVIEW Proteomics: from single molecules to biological pathways

Abstract The conventional reductionist approach to cardiovascular research investigates individual candidate factors or linear signalling pathways but ignores more complex interactions in biological systems. The advent of molecular profiling technologies that focus on a global characterization of whole complements allows an exploration of the interconnec-tivity of pathways during pathophysiologically relevant processes, but has brought about the issue of statistical analysis and data integration. Proteins identified by differential expression as well as those in protein–protein interaction net-works identified through experiments and through computational modelling techniques can be used as an initial start-ing point for functional analyses. In combination with other ‘-omics ’ technologies, such as transcriptomics and metabolomics, proteomics explores different aspects of disease, and the different pillars of observations facilitate the data integration in disease-specific networks. Ultimately, a systems biology approach may advance our under-standing of cardiovascular disease processes at a ‘biological pathway ’ instead of a ‘single molecule ’ level and accelerat