Comparative Analysis of the Omics Technologies Used to Study Antimonial, Amphotericin B, and Pentamidine Resistance in Leishmania

Table 2

The advantages and disadvantages of strategies used to study drug resistance.

	Techniques	Advantages	Disadvantages	References
Genomics	Southern blot, microarray, northern blot, sequencing, PFGE, FIGE	(a) Genetic basis of observed phenotype; (b) Large genome coverage (22–97.5%); (c) Easy to perform and interpret; (d) Reproducible	(a) Not much differences amongst species at genome level; (b) Not much informative; (c) Gene functions for most genes still unknown.	[7, 8, 14, 15, 22, 37, 41, 42, 44, 47, 51, 62]
Proteomics	2DE, MALDI-TOF, LC-MS/MS, LC-ESI-MS/MS, western blot, immunoblot	(a) Functional output of the cell; (b) Posttranslational changes visualised; (c) Mostly automated; (d) Good indicator of protein abundance and expression	(a) Number of proteins lack annotated functions; (b) Less abundant proteins hard to detect; (c) Results from in vivo amastigotes difficult to interpret; (d) Not reproducible in some cases	[6, 20, 23, 29, 30, 40, 49, 51, 51]
Metabolomics	CE-ESI-TOF-MS, HPLC, MALDI-TOF, flow cytometry, GC-MS	(a) Closest correlation to phenotype; (b) Rapid visualisation and prediction of biological impact; (c) High mass accuracy; (d) Highly specific	(a) Unable to quantify most of the metabolites.; (b) Analyte derivatives make data complex; (c) Data hard to analyse; (d) Complicated bioinformatics tools needed; (e) Costly instrumentation	[4, 5, 22, 24, 32, 35, 41, 43, 48, 51]

PFGE: pulsed field gel electrophoresis; FIGE: field inversion gel electrophoresis; 2DE: two-dimensional gel electrophoresis; MALDI-TOF MS: matrix assisted laser desorption/ionisation time of flight mass spectrometry; LC-MS/MS: liquid chromatography mass spectra/mass spectrometry; LC-ESI-MS/MS: liquid chromatography electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry; CE-ESI-TOF-MS: capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry coupled with electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry; HPLC: high performance liquid chromatography; GC-MS: gas chromatography mass spectrometry.