Relationship of Genes and Proteins Proteins are an important part of gene regulation and expression and are excellent tools for the study of gene regulation and function because proteins are responsible for the phenotype and function of an organism. Analysis of gene expression at the level of RNA alone won t give accurate results about translational regulation.
Proteomics gives an overall view of developmental changes in gene functions.
Before the studies of the proteins could be conducted, there had to be a method of displaying and identifying the proteins. Currently the only method of separating and displaying these purified proteins is two-dimensional electrophoresis. The resulting data from the 2-DGE is compared with already mapped proteins, permitting identification of problems in a given proteome. There are a few problems with the separation process of 2-D electrophoresis. Even though this method of protein separation is very useful, a great number of proteins are lost in the process due to hydrophobic interactions.