Of genomes and proteomes

The era of complete genome sequences has arrived and with it vast amounts of data which must be annotated, cross referenced, and placed within the regulatory networks which define the physiology of an organism. One eucaryotic and three procaryotic genomes have been completed and the data made available and another 50 sequences are expected to be completed by the end of the decade. One of the first steps in the new post genome era will be to decipher the functions of the huge numbers of new open reading frames. Various approaches to investigate what unknown genes do and how genes interact together within an organism are being undertaken, including (1) the simultaneous measurement of the expression levels of all genes in a cell and (2) the mapping and quantitation of all proteins expressed within a cell. The idea of systematically mapping and identifying the total protein complement of the genome (the ''proteome'') arose over 20 years ago when the separation of proteins from total cell extracts by two dimensional (2D) gel electrophoresis was developed. This review will focus on the use of 2D gel electrophoresis as the basis for constructing proteome maps and on the rapid advances in mass spectrometry which will allow the large-scale, automated identification of proteins which is necessary for the creation of such databases. (C) 1997 Academic Press.