Interpretive proteomics--finding biological meaning in genome and proteome databases.

Abstract

The 1990s was the decade of the genome. Today, complete draft sequences are available for the genomes of many eubacteria, several archaebacteria, several unicellular eukaryotes, several plants, and a growing collection of animals, including C. elegans (a worm), the fruit fly and mosquito, the mouse, and human. As these sequences have accumulated, it has become increasingly apparent that new methods are needed to exploit the information that they (must) contain. Organic chemistry has always been driven by the discovery of new natural products, elucidation of their structures, and exploration of their behaviors. Gene sequences are no more (and no less) than the structures of natural products responsible for inheritance. The genome database, and the corresponding protein sequence database, therefore provide a new collection of natural product structures to study. These display every behavior of interest to chemists: conformation, supramolecular organization, combinatorial assembly, and catalysis are just a few. At the same time, biomedical scientists are hoping that new insights into biology, disease, and treatment will be extracted from this collection of sequence data. They are adding to the data, comparing the expressed genetic inventory of diseased and normal tissues, and attempting to correlate genomic data with physiological function. Biomedical science should be revolutionized by genomic data. But how? Genomic projects also present opportunities for the emerging fields of Geobiology, Planetary Biology and Astrobiology. Geobiology and Planetary Biology seeks to understand the relation between living organisms and their global environment. The history of life on Earth cannot be separated from the history of the planet. Each has defined the structure of the other. A major, almost visionary (at this