C O N T E N T SSee AlsoDescriptionProteomics is the large-scale study of proteins, particularly their structures and functions. This term was coined to make an analogy with genomics, and while it is often viewed as the "next step", proteomics is much more complicated than genomics. DiscussionMost importantly, while the genome is a rather constant entity, the proteome differs from cell to cell and is constantly changing through its biochemical interactions with the genome and the environment. One organism will have radically different protein expression in different parts of its body, in different stages of its life cycle and in different environmental conditions. This technology is instrumental in biomarker discovery. The entirety of proteins in existence in an organism throughout its life cycle, or on a smaller scale the entirety of proteins found in a particular cell type under a particular type of stimulation, are referred to as the proteome of the organism or cell type respectively. With completion of a rough draft of the human genome, many researchers are now looking at how genes and proteins interact to form other proteins. A surprising finding of the Human Genome Project is that there are far fewer protein-coding genes in the human genome than there are proteins in the human proteome (~22,000 genes vs. ~400,000 proteins). The large increase in protein diversity is thought to be due to alternative splicing and post-translational modification of proteins. This discrepancy implies that protein diversity cannot be fully characterized by gene expression analysis alone, making proteomics a useful tool for characterizing cells and tissues of interest. Links |
