Human Peptide Database Project Will Facilitate Proteome Research

A major project is underway to amass a database that will allow researchers with access to a mass spectrometer to analyze almost any of the estimated 25,000 proteins encoded by the human genome.

The project, known as the Human Proteome MRMAtlas is being conducted by the nonprofit Institute for Systems Biology (Seattle, WA, USA) in collaboration with the major manufacturer of laboratory equipment Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (Milford, MA, USA).

During the two years that the project will be running, Thermo Fisher will provide researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology with up to 100,000 synthetic peptides. The investigators will use the synthetic peptides and mass spectrometry to identify and document at least four proteotypic, or unique, peptides for each human protein. In addition, the investigators will use thousands of custom Thermo Scientific HeavyPeptide AQUA standards to measure the abundance of the natural peptides and develop precise quantitative MRM/SRM assays.

The accumulated data will be published as a database available to researchers around the world.

"The time is right to create the complete human proteome MRMAtlas,” said Dr. Robert Moritz, associate professor and proteomics director at the Institute for Systems Biology. "This will undoubtedly accelerate efforts to develop sensitive and reliable assays for early detection, therapy assessment, and prognosis evaluation for cancer as well as other human diseases. It will pave a path to personalized medicine by improving the development of individually tailored therapies.”

"By reducing the time, effort, and cost to perform these assays, the database will dramatically increase the research output in biomarker discovery, confirmation, and validation,” said Joel Louette, commercial director for at Thermo Fisher. "We are proud to play a role in this project, which will speed up and decrease costs associated with drug development, boost personalized medicine, and support human health monitoring.”

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Institute for Systems Biology
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.