From ‘protein’ to the beginnings of clinical proteomics

It has taken over 200 years to move from the view that there was a single unique ‘protein’ to our present understanding that there may be over a million proteins in the human body. This review details the technological developments that led to this increase in knowledge especially in the area of clinical biochemistry. Simple techniques such as total protein assays allowed the quantitation of the amounts of protein in blood plasma and serum. These techniques were then linked to simple fractionation techniques to give further understanding about proteins in disease. The development of electrophoretic and chromatographic separation methods revolutionised our knowledge of proteins as well as of other small molecules in biofluids. The review finishes with the arrival of new technologies such as protein mass spectrometry and the emergence of proteomics.