What is the possibility of a human proteome project?
Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D.: The Human Genome Project demonstrated that a large, focused effort could be mounted to tackle a ‘comprehensive’ goal– like determining the entire sequence of the human genome. The notion of using a similar large, high-throughput project to determine the complete set of human proteins is certainly quite reasonable. Certainly, different methods and strategies would be required. Indeed, efforts to develop catalogs of all proteins in certain cells or certain tissues are ongoing. This emerging field is often called ‘proteomics’.
