Discovery based and targeted Mass Spectrometry in farm animal proteomics

Technological advances in mass spectrometry have greatly improved accuracy and speed of analyses of proteins and biochemical pathways. These proteome technologies have transformed research and diagnostic methods in the biomedical fields, and in food and farm animal sciences proteomics can be used to investigate and monitor specific marker proteins and peptides within complex food matrices, as for example, for guaranteeing safety and quality of processed and stored foods like cheese and cured meat. Likewise, specific diagnostic markers associated with compromised welfare, or with early infections can be monitored to improve welfare in large industrial settings of current livestock industry. The combination of discovery based LC-MS/MS methods and the more hypothesis-based targeted mass spectrometry method commonly referred to as selected reaction monitoring or SRM, provide a powerful approach for investigating farm animal biology. SRM is particularly important for validation biomarker candidates This talk will introduce the use of different mass spectrometry approaches through examples related to food quality and animal welfare, including studies of gut health in pigs, host pathogen interactions in the bovine mammary gland, and the monitoring meat and milk quality markers. Also work related to collecting farm animal proteome information within the PeptideAtlas frame (www.peptideatlas.org) will be discussed. The PeptideAtlas database currently includes data from shotgun proteomics experiments from tissues and body fluids from pig, cow and horse, and currently provides the primary public resource for designing SRM methods for farm animal applications