Independent Research Groups Publish Near-Complete Human Proteome Maps

Two independent research groups published draft maps of the human proteome. One study was a joint collaboration between researchers in India and the U.S, while the other project was by researchers in Germany.

Both teams used advanced equipment to collect proteins from human tissues and create a comprehensive map of human proteome - the protein equivalent of human genome. The first study - by researchers at the Institute of Bioinformatics, The Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere - mapped proteins coded by 17,924 genes, around 84 percent of all annotated genes. The German research team catalogued around 92 percent of the estimated 19,629 proteins in the human body.

What's more, both teams found proteins that were coded by genes which were earlier referred to as "junk" or non-functional DNA. The research shows that despite sorting through genetic data for so long, scientists aren't sure about the function of several genes. The Indian team discovered at least 200 novel human proteins. Researchers called them the "missing proteins."

The new database is like The Human Genome Project, which was completed in 2003. The protein maps are still incomplete, but fill major gaps in protein research.

The teams are excited about the protein database.

"It is a surprising co-incidence that both of our groups have simultaneously worked on this [proteome draft] without knowing each other's work," said Dr. Harsha Gowda from the Institute of Bioinformatics, Bangalore, to Nature World News. "It will be interesting to compare our datasets to extend our understanding of the human proteome."

"I think the Pandey paper is a great piece of work and both studies substantially advance our understanding of the human proteome and genome," said Bernhard Kuster, lead author of the study at  Bernhard Küster of the Technische Universität München in Germany, to Nature World News. Kuster was referring to Akhilesh Pandey at The Johns Hopkins University, who worked on the protein map by researchers in Bangalore, India.

Both teams used slightly different approaches to create the human proteome map. Indian researchers said that they had to "start from scratch" by removing proteins from 30 human tissue samples. They then used mass spectrometry to find relative abundance of each protein. The team used only normal proteins for their research. All their data was developed on a single platform.

Pandey said that data produced by his lab "will become the gold standard in the field," because it was generated using uniform methods and analysis.

The German researchers collected data from public databases and combined it with data generated at their lab.

The data from both teams is available online; Human Proteome Map can be found here and the ProteomicsDB, here. Both studies are published in the journal Nature.