Protein Library

A team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins University, USA and the Institute of Bioinformatics in Bangalore, India have created an initial catalogue of all the proteins possibly present in the human body. The cataloguing process of proteins is similar to the Human Genome Project – an international scientific project to map all the genes present in the human genome.

To begin with, the researchers used 30 tissues and extracted their proteins encoded by 17,294 genes that constitute about 84% of all the genes present in the human genome known to encode proteins. Enzymes such as chemical scissors were used to cut them into smaller pieces called peptides. By running the peptides through a series of state–of–the–art instruments, they were able to reduce its identity and relative abundance. Scientists during the process came across 193 new proteins from regions of the genome that were previously thought of as non–coding regions (regions that do not encode protein sequences) of the DNA.

According to the researchers, each protein is like a book in a huge library. However, there is no comprehensive catalogue that gives data about these proteins and they believe this catalogue is a major step towards it. Researchers alluded that the protein library would make it easier for other researchers to identify proteins during experiments.