A ROLE FOR EDMAN-DEGRADATION IN PROTEOME STUDIES

Advances in protein database design and the software used to access th e sequence data has led to progress in using protein attributes such a s amino acid composition and peptide masses to identify proteins separ ated by two-dimensional electrophoresis. However, Edman degradation re mains the principal technique for protein identification and it presen ts a significant bottleneck in the progress towards rapid protein iden tification. Simple modifications to the sequencing hardware, which aut omate the delivery of protein spots into the sequencer, and parallel s equencing of the protein spots represent a significant advance in the use of Edman degradation to rapidly generate the powerful protein attr ibute, an N-terminal sequence tag.