Today, the Journal of Proteome Research published an entire issue dedicated to the 2020 mapping of 90% of the human proteome by the Human Proteome Project (HPP).
Dr. Chris Overall, a professor in Oral Biological and Medical Sciences with the UBC Faculty of Dentistry and a member of the Centre for Blood Research at UBC, is Associate Editor of the publication, and contributed the lead editorial, was senior author on three papers, and co-author on five papers among the 15 studies published in the special edition.
As the lead of the only Canadian lab helping bring the proteome draft release to fruition, Dr. Overall has also published an overview of the HPP in Nature Communications: “A High Stringency Blueprint of the Human Proteome.”
Asked by journalist Molly Campbell writing for Technology Networks how it feels as a scientist to be involved in a project that contributes so largely to our understanding of human life, Dr. Overall replied,
“Incredibly exciting!”
“This is all non-funded work in my lab, and in most labs that participated in defining the human proteome, but I feel it is so important a scientific and medical pursuit that we do it unfunded, in our own time. Genomics cannot provide all the answers or diagnostics for diseases lacking a genetic basis. Critically, genomics cannot provide information on disease activity and on-target drug activity. Only proteomics can do so.”