New perspectives in Proteomics as a significant tool to evaluate mould metabolism in foods

Abstract

Proteomics is a potent tool to be used for functional studies of foodborne undesirable moulds, mainly utilised for deciphering the antifungal mechanisms of biocontrol agents against moulds. Within such discipline, Phosphoproteomics has enormous potential for revealing signalling pathways to be combined with results from single shot-gun proteomics, although it has been scarcely used in this field as several limitations must be overcome. Furthermore, Proteomics, which offers a faithful picture of the phenotype, requires other omics to obtain a complete comprehension of the moulds’ metabolism and physiology. Thus, integration libraries and platforms for foodborne moulds, which are not available yet, as well as the computational tools implementation for analysing the enormous data generated, comprise the main current weakness of Proteomics. Finally, current applications performed in other research fields, such as clinical Proteomics, may serve as a mirror for further developing this tool when applied to food-related moulds.