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Published online 23 April 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/452920a
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Biologists initiate plan to map human proteome
Project aims to characterize all human proteins.
Ambitious plans to catalogue and characterize all proteins in the human body — a Human Proteome Project — are being drawn up by a small group of researchers. But with a price tag of around US$1 billion, some question whether the organizers can raise enough money or momentum for such an undertaking.
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I do agree in respect to the points of challenges facing this project and I think the idea of having systenic steps approach will be ideal using mitochondrial or cell proteins or starting the project depending on diseases eg Breast cancer and others. Comaring human samples from different countries, tribes might show different results. So again the project can be based on HLA typing. Dr. Nazar M. Abdalla. PhD molecular biology.
The importance of systems level understanding is undisputed. Not only at the level of proteomics but also at epigenomic, lipidomic, metabololomic, glycomic levels, besides others. Although these projects are going to be challenging, costly and time intensive, they need to be undertaken because all these efforts may eventually lead to a comprehensive understanding of cellular function that will help develop drugs with specific therapeutic action and minimum side effects.
I think this is the right time to map the human proteome. After having huge pile of datas on gene expressions based on microarray and more recently with the no. of small RNA regulator MicroRNA no. going up, its very difficult to predict the regulatory output of an organ in a particular stimulus / disease / micro environment. Studying human proteome in a quantitaive manner could solve most of the biological problems. However addition of protein protein interactions and inetgration of its biological output could add another dimension of to the human proteome.The complexity is undefined at present but I feel its worth going for human proteome. Pankaj Mishra, Ph.D. Biotechnology
Mapping the human proteome and applying bioinformatics tools for knowledge generation particularly for target identification and mechanism of drug action will have great importance in the context of the burgeoning interest in traditional polyherbal system of medicines as well as in the case of metal medicines that are often comlexed with organics/phenolics/aromatics. This can open up a new frontier of knowledge with immense portents for new drug developments sureshkumar,head,pme,NIIST