Indian researcher leads effort to create human protein encyclopedia

London, Feb 8 : An Indian researcher at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine has led the effort to create online human protein encyclopedia.

To create 'human proteinpedia', Akhilesh Pandey coordinated with scientists and software developers at the Institute of Bioinformatics, a non-profit institute he founded in Bangalore, India, in 2002, to compile to date the largest free resource of experimental information about human proteins.

The research team has explained how all researchers around the world can access this data and speed their research.

"Advances in technology have made data generation much easier, but processing it and interpreting observations are now the major hurdles in science today," Nature quoted 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, as saying.

"We've created a repository that incorporates easy-to-use Web forms so that all researchers can contribute and share data," he added.

Human Proteinpedia enables any researcher to add and edit their data as their research progresses, just like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

"Researchers will be able to quickly review what has been discovered by others about their protein of interest, speeding their own work," Pandey said.

Human Proteinpedia includes information on when and where specific proteins are expressed or not, including in cells and tissues from diseases such as cancers; how the proteins are modified; and which other proteins they interact with.

It includes only experimental data and doesn't include computer-generated predictions, which may not turn out to be real.

The present version of Human Proteinpedia compiles data provided by more than 71 laboratories from all over the world and contains entries for more than 15,230 human proteins.

"With the amount of proteomic data pouring in each day, however, cataloging all of human protein data by hand is a Herculean task," says Pandey.

"So we're hoping that the scientific community will come together to contribute data generated in individual laboratories. This will not only improve the quality of the data but also increase the pace at which data is collected in a common repository.

"We're excited about the enthusiasm and involvement of the entire global proteomics community and hope that we can work with companies like Google and Microsoft that are interested in enabling such data sharing and dissemination for biological data," he added.

The study is published in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology.

ANI