It's still anyone's guess what the final gene count will be in the human genome, let alone the total number of proteins. But one thing is for sure: The proteome is astoundingly more complex than the genome. And it is not just the numbers, though they are staggering: 30,000 genes could well translate into one million proteins.
Where genes are easily manipulated and synthesized, allowing scientists to anticipate how they will behave chemically, researchers have no such luck with the proteome: The proteome's truly exasperating feature is its dynamic nature. Proteins are made, processed, turned over, modified, shuffled from one compartment to another, and bundled up into complexes with other proteins. "We have to remember," says Marc Vidal, assistant professor of genetics, Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, "that the proteome is vast. It's like terra incognita.... We have a few settlers, we have to explore a huge amount of ...
