n.
The set of all proteins created and used by an organism.
Example Citation:
"'The human proteome has become the next frontier of modern biology,' said Peter Meldrum, president and chief executive of Myriad, a biotechnology company in Salt Lake City that is leading the venture. The proteome is a term referring to all the proteins in an organism, much as the genome refers to an organism's complete set of DNA, containing all the genes."
—Andrew Pollack, "3 Companies Will Try to Identify All Human Proteins," The New York Times, April 5, 2001
—Andrew Pollack, "3 Companies Will Try to Identify All Human Proteins," The New York Times, April 5, 2001
Notes:
Thanks to the Human Genome Project and related endeavors, many of us have at least some familiarity with the arcane jargon of genomics ("the study of genes"). However, there is a related field that you're probably going to hear a lot about over the next few years. It's called proteomics, "the study of proteins." Many scientists now believe that proteomics is medically more important than genomics. That's because genes themselves "only" serve one purpose: to hold the instructions for creating proteins. But proteins are the fundamental building blocks of the human body. All our tissues, muscles, bones, and other body bits and pieces are conglomerations of proteins. So it appears as though the biotechnology industry's attention for the next few years will be focussed on studying how proteins work and on cataloguing the complete human proteome.
Here's a citation that explains the origins of today's word:
|
Related Words:
Categories:
