Human Proteome Project

The Human Proteome Project is a large-scale international initiative which is directed to the identification of all human proteins.

As a result of completion of the Project, cheap and accessible methods of medical diagnostics will be created, the methods being capable to reveal the earliest stages of diseases, providing an individual approach to the treatment of diseases that are considered as incurable at this time.

The scale of proteome encounters several million proteins distinct in the structure, despite they are coded only by 22-26 thousand genes.

The higher the concentration sensitivity of analytical method, the higher number of proteins can be analyzed. Therefore, in order to complete the Project it is vital to develop technologies capable to allow investigators working with concentrations lower than 10^-15 m.

The international Human Proteome Project makes it ambition mission to catalogue and characterize the proteome of the human body. The small team of scientists has launched the initial stage of this plan. The declared value of the Project is about 1 billion USD and therefore a question arises if there are enough funds and forces to implement the Project.

Skilled scientists began to discuss the Project in the mid 90s when the Human Genome Project was in its active phase and the Human Proteome Project was considered as the successor. Scale and complexity of assigned task have appeared somewhat "fuzzy", such as any coordinated activities to systematize human proteins had not followed.

Protein-coding genes in the human body can produce tens of different protein variations and each of them can be modified by addition of various chemical groups by various ways. All these protein forms are produced in about 200 types of cells of human body. According to John Bergeron (McGrill University, Montreal, Canada), the former president of the Human Proteome Project, in the previous art there was no clear understanding of such phenomenon.

Now Bergeron and group of leading scientists in the field of proteomics prepare a proposal on the large-scale human proteome project. The Project will help scientists to define proteins found in each tissue, each protein location in a cell and its interactions with other proteins (conversely, human genetic sequence reveals only those sites which coded proteins, but do not create them). According to the opinion of the Project leaders, this type of protein catalogue would be really invaluable for detection of new drug targets and biomarkers in the process of disease development.