Proteomics approaches for the analysis of enriched microbial subpopulations and visualization of complex functional information

Advances in the separation of microbial subpopulations and in proteomics technologies have paved the way for the global molecular characterization of microbial cells that share common functional characteristics. Quantitative characterization of the dynamics of microbial proteomes enables an unprecedented view of the adaptive responses of microbes to environmental stimuli or during interaction with other species or host cells. However, the intrinsic complexity of such data requires sophisticated visualization methods for the display, mining, interpretation and efficient exploitation of these data resources. In this review, we discuss how new approaches in data visualization such as streamgraphs, network graphs or Voronoi treemaps are being used in the field to provide new insights into the functional complexity of microbial cells, populations and multispecies consortia.

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► Access to proteomics is now possible after flow cytometry-based cell sorting.
► New visualization tools like Voronoi treemaps or streamgraphs now allows interpretation of complex omics data.
► Useful instrumentation to study microbial subpopulation from, for example, host–pathogen interaction assays.