Proteomics: Promising Research/Potential Applications/and New Developments

PROTEOMICS: PROMISING RESEARCH, POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS, AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS

Proteomics research is growing at a rapid rate and has become one of the most important areas of investigation in biotechnology. There are proteomics programs in nearly every major biotechnology and pharmaceutical firm, and critical developments are virtually impossible to track.

Technical Insights report separates the good news from the mundane by providing the following:

• A detailed overview of technological advances in development laboratories
• Identification of key companies and developers and provision of estimates of timelines for commercializing technology
• Definitions of key markets and applications
• Reporting on technology drivers as well as obstacles in the way of commercial success
• A detailed list of key contacts in the field, including names, titles, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and URLs

Proteomics is not the study of proteins one by one, as has traditionally been done, but a highly automated endeavor operating on a massive scale. High-throughput is the operative phrase, with increasingly sensitive assay techniques, the integration of multiple techniques into a single platform, and robotics and computers taking the place of lab technicians. A great challenge lies ahead, therefore, for scientists to develop effective systems with high-throughput, suitably sensitive arrays, and a complicated level of integration.

Proteins are the building blocks of tissues and cells, circulate in the blood to eliminate disease, regulate body temperature, digest food, synthesize other proteins and small molecules, and in general perform all the work necessary to keep an organism working. Under- or overproduction of proteins is implicated in many human diseases. Thus, knowing which genes are responsible for which proteins gives medical science a point of attack for potentially curing many illnesses.

In the 1980s, when working with DNA and characterizing genes became easy, vast numbers of researchers in biology abandoned whatever they were studying to pursue the glamorous field of molecular genetics. Newspapers and magazines extolled the medical miracles that would come from identifying the gene for this disorder or that form of cancer. Investors made millions in genomic biotech.

But a group of scientists stayed behind to study proteins. They were content to labor quietly behind the scenes, out of the limelight, for one reason. They believed proteins were the key to everything---that if you didn't understand what was happening in a cell beyond the DNA sequence of a given gene, you didn't understand anything. Now everyone has realized these guys were right all along. Proteins are the next new thing.

The endeavor of characterizing the human proteome is an order of magnitude more complex than genomics. Additional new technologies and refinements of standard techniques are needed urgently, and considerable effort is being devoted to the development of novel tools for the proteomics trade.

Proteomics is an intensely more difficult field of study. One paramount reason for this is that the one-gene, one-protein hypothesis is disproved. Many genes produce multiple proteins via alternative splicing of mRNA transcripts, proving that there are many more proteins in human cells than there are genes in the human genome.