Want to brighten up your Monday when you know you're gonna be stuck working all day and miss the first beautiful day of spring? This might only work for serious mass spec nerds, but this beautifully written open access review started my week of right!!
Awesome figures? Check!
Wows you with the authors knowledge of microbiology, classical genetics techniques, and cutting edge proteomics? Check!
Explains the powers and limitations of a staggering array of techniques and how a complementary technology is needed to fill in the gaps? Check!
(Side note: If you need justification for why the average number of authors/paper is increasing over time, this review puts it in perspective!)
(Stole this figure from the Winnover -- original article here)
I think my main takeaway point from this paper is that there are a dizzying number of approaches that we have now for studying biological systems with mass spectrometers. When they're really sat down in a comprehensive line it is easy to think that -- wow, we might honestly be at a point where maybe only a few people in the world -- if anyone -- could be a master of all of them. But...there are still gaps that all of these tools together can't fill -- and we might need classical and next-generation molecular tools (including some things I've never heard of!) to really get a comprehensive picture of complete biological systems. (I think there are 40 words in this sentence...)
TL/DR: Just a seriously awesome and visually stunning review (prettier as HTML than PDF) that puts our current capabilities and limitations in perspective.
P.S. If you look up the technique in the top image, the first thing you see is this guy....
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