Community Research and Development Information Service - CORDIS

Proteomics is a major new field in biomedical research, which deals with the large-scale identification and characterization of large groups of proteins, or proteomes. These can either be the components of a subcellular organelle or compartment, or even the entire protein complement of whole cells and tissues. Proteomics is essential in the functional annotation of the genome and in future attempts to build a quantitative, systems-based description of cell biology. However, current first generation proteomics approaches largely measure protein complexes and proteomes as homogeneous and static entities with little or no quantitative annotation.

PROSPECTS (PROteomics SPECification in Time and Space) is a proposal by world leaders in this young discipline to make a major advance, both by developing much more powerful instrumentation and by applying novel proteomics methods that will allow us to annotate quantitatively the human proteome with respect to protein localization and dynamics. Complementary technologies, including mass spectrometry, cyro-electron microscopy and cell imaging will be applied in innovative ways to capture transient protein complexes and the spatial and temporal dimensions of entire proteomes.