Proteomics of the Salivary Fluid

Abstract

Following the sequencing of the human genome, the mapping of the human proteome is the next task to being completed in order to gain knowledge on how proteins are involved in disease genesis, growth, therapy, and healing. As contrary to the genome, which is relatively static, the human proteome is significantly more complex and highly dynamic. Whilst the majority of the research is being focused on analyzing either the proteome of tumor tissues and tumor cells or the proteome of serum and plasma, little attention has been awarded to the analysis of proteomes in saliva or urine. The prote-ome in saliva can help providing important information on processes involving health issues in dentistry, head and neck cancers, gastric cancers or neurology, to name just a few. However, this is changing and the proteomics research community is increasingly focusing on deciphering the salivary proteome. So far, more than 3000 proteins have been identified in different studies and more is to come with new instrumentation and methods available. Some of the proteomics methods applied for analysis of salivary proteins will be discussed in this chapter.