VATIS UPDATE Article

A new study done by researchers at Macquarie University, Australia, has provided what it says is a way to help uncover the 2,949 missing proteins in the human body that are currently ‘in the shadows’ and have yet to be proven to exist. The newly released MissingProteinPedia database collates information about proteins in unprecedented ways, allowing Human Proteome Project scientists to gain a deeper understanding of how our proteins work together to make every human an individual.

The database, developed by a collaborative research group lead by scientists at Macquarie University, will assist all researchers pinpoint every protein found in the human body and how these interact, with potential repercussions for better understanding many diseases. It could not only help researchers learn more about the location and use – termed ‘expression’ – of specific proteins in the body but also how they interact to make us human. It will also help to pin down those proteins which are still ‘in the shadows’, with implications for several diseases.

The tool accelerates the discovery of many missing proteins, particularly those in elusive protein families, with potentially significant consequences for human disease. “MissingProteinPedia has uncovered substantial evidence for many hard-to-detect proteins for which small amounts of information have taken years to gather. The very fact that we have come so far in such a short time bodes well for our understanding of complex human diseases such as cancer,” said Professor Shoba Ranganathan, at Macquarie University.