What is Proteomics?
The Center
Rationale of the Proteome Center
Technology and Application Development
Post Doctoral Fellow Program
Definitions
What is Proteomics?
Proteomics is a subset of functional genomics and is the study of the proteins expressed by an organism.
These studies link genome sequence data and gene function.
The completion of the genomes for a large number of organisms is beginning to revolutionize experimental approaches to a variety of problems in
Biology and Medicine. This revolution is perhaps best reflected in the meteoric rise in "proteome" studies, a
term coined by Marc Wilkins (Proteome Research: New Frontiers in Functional Genomics", Wilkins, Williams, Appel, and Hochstrasser, Eds., 1997) and colleagues (Macquarie University, Australia). The proteome of a cell is
simply all the proteins expressed by its genome. The proteome is of intense interest to investigators because
proteins are the major functional components of the cell. In the post-genome context, characterization of a
protein links it directly to its cognate gene. Thus an understanding of the function of a particular protein leads
directly to gene function. This direct connection between the structure of the 100,000 human genes and the
functions of their gene products (mainly proteins) is being pursued avidly. Investigators who have access to
technologies allowing them to effectively make this structure-function connection will dramatically increase their
productivity. But more than increased productivity, these technologies will address questions that were previously
unanswerable. We will be able to ask (and answer) questions that we haven't thought of yet.
