title: The Role of Mass Spectrometry in the "Omics" Era.
abstract: Mass spectrometry (MS) is one of the key analytical technology on which the emerging ''-omics'' approaches are based. It may provide detection and quantization of thousands of proteins and biologically active metabolites from a tissue, body fluid or cell culture working in a ''global'' or ''targeted'' manner, down to ultra-trace levels. It can be expected that the high performance of MS technology, coupled to routine data handling, will soon bring fruit in the request for a better understanding of human diseases, leading to new molecular biomarkers, hence affecting drug targets and therapies. In this review, we focus on the main advances in the MS technologies, influencing genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, lipidomics and metabolomics fields, up to the most recent MS applications to meta-omic studies.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory Medicine, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, IRCCS, Piazza Sant'Onofrio 4, 00165, Rome, Italy;
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Di Girolamo
authors.affiliation: Laboratory Medicine, San Camillo Hospital, Viale Vittorio Veneto 18, 31100, Treviso, Italy;
authors.forename: Isabella
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lante
authors.affiliation: Laboratory Medicine, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, IRCCS, Piazza Sant'Onofrio 4, 00165, Rome, Italy;
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Muraca
authors.affiliation: Parasitology Unit, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, IRCCS, Piazza Sant'Onofrio 4, 00165, Rome, Italy; ; Metagenomics Unit, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, IRCCS, Piazza Sant'Onofrio 4, 00165, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Lorenza
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Putignani
keywords: MS; MS-based genomics; MS-based lipidomics; MS-based metabolomics; MS-based proteomics; Mass spectrometry; Meta-omics 