The Human Proteome Project (HPP) is a collaborative effort coordinated by the Human Proteome Organization. Its stated goal is to experimentally observe all of the proteins produced by the sequences translated from the human genome.
History
The Human Proteome Organization has served as a coordinating body for many long-running proteomics research projects associated with specific human tissues of clinical interest, such as blood plasma, liver, brain and urine. It has also been responsible for projects associated with specific technology and standards necessary for the large scale study of proteins.
The structure and goals of a larger project that would parallel the Human Genome Project has been debated in the scientific literature. The results of this debate and a series of meetings at the World Congresses of the Human Proteome Organization in 2009, 2010 and 2011 has been the decision to define the Human Proteome Project as being composed of two sub-projects, C-HPP and B/D-HPP. The C-HPP will be organized into 25 groups, one per human chromosome. The B/D-HPP will be organized into groups by the biological and disease relevance of proteins.
Projects and groups
The current set of working groups are listed below, in order of the chromosome to be studied.
Computational resources
Data reduction, analysis and validation of MS/MS based proteomics results is being provided by Eric Deutsch's group at the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, USA (PeptideAtlas). Data handling associated with antibody methods is being coordinated by Kalle von Feilitzen, Stockholm, Sweden (Human Protein Atlas). Overall integration and reporting informatics are the responsibility of Lydie Lane at SIB, Geneva, Switzerland (NeXtProt). All data generated as part of HPP contributions are deposited to one of the ProteomeXchange repositories.
Current status
The ongoing operations of the chromosome-based Human Proteome Project was the subject of a special issue of the Journal of Proteome Research (January 3, 2014, Volume 13, Issue 1). The status of the overall project was discussed in an Editorial in that issue.
A separate CHPP-wiki has been established by the project's bioinformatics group to maintain current project information, including meetings, events, SOPs and other special resources for the individual chromosome teams.
Metrics for the level of confidence associated with protein observations are a key component of this project. How to define metrics that are meaningful for the variety of experimental protocols being used is a subject of ongoing debate: the current consensus metrics have been published.
Journal articles describing recent status of the project and announcing the launch of the "MissingProteinPedia" can be found here.
References
External links
- HPP project page (www.hupo.org)
- HPP web site (www.thehpp.org)
- Chromosome-centric HPP web site (www.c-hpp.org)
- BD HPP web site (www.thehpp.org/BD-HPP.php)