The Protein Structure Initiative
The Human Genome Project was great except that all of the information that was gathered is pretty useless until we know something about the proteins that are made by gene sequences - specifically what they look like and what function they have. In 2000 the National Institute of Health launched the Protein Structure Initiative to solve the structures of 10,000 proteins. The initiative was designed to take 10 years but here we are in year 8 and what do we know? As of 2005 1200 protein structures had been added to the national database and the technical development phase was completed. Unfortunately, there are billions of proteins in this world all functioning to form complex machines which we have barely begun to understand.
Life really is a miracle in the sense that beings carry the genetic information to replicate themselves, and in this replication a new life is formed in a carefully constructed way which prevents it from growing an extra arm out of its brain. Errors happen, but the majority of the time these series of genes produce a series of proteins which operate every possible function of the body.
In the following years of the project, the goal was to use the technology learned to add more proteins to the database. 3 years and 2000 structures later, we have entered into a tough time. We are gathering information on protein structures but we don't have any use for this information yet. We don't know why this is important and yet we continue to throw money into researching the shapes of proteins. This year marked $80 million alone and the expected tab by 2010 is over $700 million. The question facing the funders of the project now is whether or not to continue with it in 2010. The human genome project was a similar undertaking which started out rough and ended with a complete genome. The only problem is that we cannot to anything with this information except pat ourselves on the back for figuring out the whole gosh-darn thing. Yay us. But what do we do now? How do we attempt to figure out what every single one of the billions of proteins does? Is it worth continuing with this project?
Posted by Sarah Kaz (2B)
posted by PWH @ 10:09 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Your post is very opinionated, did you find any information about why people wanted to continue researching these proteins if they're not getting anything from it? And are researchers selecting proteins at random to study, or are they selecting proteins that they believe may be linked to certain disorders?
Nicole Eckart
It does seem strange that they want to continue with the research and continue putting all of this money into this project if they are not getting the results that they had hopped for. I was wondering the same question as the previous comment in that, is that a specific reason as to why they are continuing with the research even though they are not gaining substantial results?
Meaghan Elliott
With so much money being put into this research, I am amazed that they don't have an actual reason for it. I am sure that in time it will be useful though. After all, it was only a little over fifty years ago that scientists discovered the structure of DNA and we already have all the human genes mapped. Maybe someday knowing more about these proteins will help doctors treat genetic diseases before there are any symptoms.
Posted by Ben Tummino
It appears as though the advancements in developing new protein structures has gotten ahead of the encoding technology. Wouldn't it make more sense to allocate more money towards gathering information regarding these protein structures as opposed to developing new, uninterpretable ones? This project clearly has many positive attributes, helping us understand the complex structure of life one sequence at a time, but of what good is discovering a new language that cannot be understood?
--Thomas FitzGerald
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