Technologies for proteomics, e.g. studies examining the protein complement of the genome, have been in development for over twenty years. More recently, proteomics has become formalized by combining techniques for large-scale protein separation with very precise, high fidelity approaches that analyze, identify, and characterize the separated proteins. These methods bring to reality the powerful scope of proteomics, enabling researchers to investigate cellular function at the protein level and thus representing one of proteomics' most fitting applications. In this review we take a brief and concise look at some of the current, physiologically relevant technologies that comprise proteomics and report specific applications where proteomics has provided valuable biological insight.