Proteins are the workhorse molecules of the cell. They catalyze reactions, transport molecules within the cell and switch genes on and off. Measuring the abundance of and identifying the cellular locations of yeast proteins will be invaluable in helping to understand the complex biology of a relatively simple organism. Beyond that, however, the effort is emblematic of a shift in biological research, toward understanding how changes in the "proteome" -- the interacting global network of proteins in a cell -- can influence cellular "behavior."
Research teams led by HHMI investigators Erin K. O'Shea and Jonathan S. Weissman, both of the University of California at San Francisco, published two research articles describing their work in the October 16, 2003, issue of the journal Nature.
"We have now made the yeast proteome accessible in a way it simply wasn't before," said Weissman. "Now, investigators can measure the abundance of proteins and follow their location with a degree of sensitivity that was never possible for any proteome in any organism. We believe that this capability really strengthens the status of yeast as the premier organism for the systems-biology approach to a coherent, comprehensive understanding of how the cell works."
According to the researchers, determining the relative abundance of proteins in yeast will offer more insight into protein function than do studies of levels of messenger RNA (mRNA), the most widely used indicator of cellular activity. Messenger RNA molecules are the genetic templates for proteins. In constructing proteins, the mRNA template is transcribed from gene
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Contact: Jim Keeley
keeleyj@hhmi.org
301-215-8858
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
15-Oct-2003