Proteomic analyses for the characterization of toxicity pathways and their interactions in human cells: learning from marine biotoxins

The analysis of molecular families by “omic” approaches is increasingly used in investigations onto signaling pathways. We have exploited proteomic analyses to probe the molecular responses of living systems exposed to marine biotoxins, and found that these components cause changes in the levels of expression of many proteins in MCF-7 cells. By an integration of different means of protein detection and analysis, we observed changes in molecular components that reveal the involvement of complex sets of covalent modifications of hsp 27 in the signaling pathways responsible for the death response of MCF-7 cells exposed to okadaic acid. The integration of results obtained by complementary analytical techniques and means of analyte detection facilitates a better exploitation of proteomic approaches.