Interlaboratory studies and initiatives developing standards for proteomics.

Proteomics is a rapidly transforming interdisciplinary field of research that embraces a diverse set of analytical approaches to tackle problems in fundamental and applied biology. This viewpoint article highlights the benefits of interlaboratory studies and standardization initiatives to enable investigators to address many of the challenges found in proteomics research. Among these initiatives, we discuss our efforts on a comprehensive performance standard for characterizing PTMs by MS that was recently developed by the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) Proteomics Standards Research Group (sPRG). © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.