Johns Hopkins researcher leads international effort to create 'proteinpedia'

BIOLOGY CLASS
How many of you use wikipedia to find the answer to different questions?...well, me too. Now think of this, a wiki that specializes only on what we are currently discussing in class; proteins. Yes, those molecules with their distinctive shapes that determine our phenotype.

Researchers at JHU came up with the idea of creating this online service for research labs working on proteonics and molecular biology to share all their findings and making them accessible to other labs and the public. What's great about the site is the fact that the data published is based on results of actual experiments and not models or predictions. Just like the Human Genome Project, decoding and understanding the proteins synthesized by organisms can be a daunting task, projects like these, the HUMAN PROTEINPEDIA, will help speed up the process of disseminating all this information.

Based on what we have discussed in class in terms of understanding what DNA and proteins are and how they work, which is more useful, let's say, for the field of medicine. Are they both equally important, or maybe one can help medicine more that the other. Let me know what do you think.

A researcher at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine has led the effort to compile to date the largest free resource of experimental information about human proteins. Reporting in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology, the research team describes how all researchers around the world can access this data and speed their own research.

“Advances in technology have made data generation much easier, but processing it and interpreting observations are now the major hurdles in science today,” says Akhilesh Pandey, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of biological chemistry, pathology and oncology and member of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Hopkins. more

Source: Biology News Net