Book excerpt: The book deals with the theory and practice of all electrophoretic steps leading to proteome analysis, i.e. isoelectric focusing (including immobilized pH gradients), sodium dodecyl sulphate electrophoresis (SADS-PAGE) and finally two-dimensional maps. It is a reasoned collection of all modern, relevant, up-to-date methodologies leading to successful fractionation, analysis and characterization of every polypeptide spot in 2-D map analysis. It includes chapters on the most sophisticated mass spectrometry developments and it helps the reader in navigating through the most important databases in proteome analysis, including step by step tours in selected sites. Yet, this book's unique strength and feature is the fact that it combines not only practice (in common with any other book on this topic) but also theory, by giving a detailed treatment on the most advanced theoretical treatments of steady-state techniques, such as isoelectric focusing and immobilized pH gradients. A lot of this theory is newly developed and presented to the public for the first time. Thus, this book should satisfy not only the needs of every day practitioners, but also the desires of the most advanced theoreticians in the field, who will surely appreciate the novel theories presented here. Also the methodological section contains several as yet unpublished protocols, correcting some of the existing ones and showing the pitfall and limitations of even well ingrained protocols in proteome analysis, which are here critically re-evaluated for the first time.