  Taking the opportunity of the 20th anniversary of the word "proteomics", this
young adult age is a good time to remember how proteomics came from enormous
progress in protein separation and protein microanalysis techniques, and from
the conjugation of these advances into a high performance and streamlined
working setup. However, in the history of the almost three decades that
encompass the first attempts to perform large scale analysis of proteins to the
current high throughput proteomics that we can enjoy now, it is also
interesting to underline and to recall how difficult the first decade was.
Indeed when the word was cast, the battle was already won. This recollection is
mostly devoted to the almost forgotten period where proteomics was being
conceived and put to birth, as this collective scientific work will never
appear when searched through the keyword "proteomics". BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE:
The significance of this manuscript is to recall and review the two decades
that separated the first attempts of performing large scale analysis of
proteins from the solid technical corpus that existed when the word
"proteomics" was coined twenty years ago. This recollection is made within the
scientific historical context of this decade, which also saw the blossoming of
DNA cloning and sequencing. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled:
20 years of Proteomics in memory of Viatliano Pallini. Guest Editors: Luca Bini
, Juan J. Calvete, Natacha Turck, Denis Hochstrasser and Jean-Charles Sanchez.
