Historical perspective of peptidomics

• Peptidomics is the analysis of peptides, without focusing on biological activity.
• Developments in HPLC and MS are the basis of its analytical technology.
• Peptidomics is related to proteomics, but there are many differences.
• Biomarker and neuropeptide discovery are important applications of peptidomics.

Peptides have been studied for over 100 years, but for most of this time the focus was on a specific peptide or peptides, and not on the general peptidome of a biological sample. In the 1990s, mass spectrometry techniques were developed for the analysis of proteins, usually after digestion into peptides. The field of peptidomics started soon after proteomics and has grown to over 600 publications that use the word “peptidomic” or “peptidomics”. Although peptidomics is related to proteomics, there are fundamental differences. In this review, we discuss these differences along with the history of the field of peptidomics.

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