Integral membrane proteins in proteomics. How to break open the black box?

Integral membrane proteins (IMPs) are attractive therapeutic targets mostly due to their many important functions. However, our knowledge of the membrane proteome is severely limited to effectively exploit their potential. This is mostly due to the lack of appropriate techniques or methods compatible with the typical features of IMPs, namely hydrophobicity, low expression and lack of trypsin cleavage sites. This review summarizes the most recent development in membrane proteomics and outlines the most successful strategies for their large-scale analysis.