Proteomics: biology in the post-genomic era.

In June 2001, when the Human Genome Project and Celera completed the first maps of the human genome, Francis Collins, head of the government sponsored HGP, warned that only then would the real race begin. Proteomics is more complex by several orders of magnitude than genomics, with no one company, laboratory or consortium remotely able to run the race alone, acknowledged Brian D. Chait, head of the mass spectrometry laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York City. With the publication of the draft of the human genome in the February 16, 2001 issues of Science and Nature came what many had already suspected: instead of the earlier estimate of about 100 000 human genes, the actual count reduced this figure by 75 percent.