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Towards completion of the Earth's proteome
Author(s) -
PerezIratxeta Carolina,
Palidwor Gareth,
AndradeNavarro Miguel A
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1038/sj.embor.7401117
Subject(s) - proteome , astrobiology , earth (classical element) , computational biology , biology , bioinformatics , physics , mathematical physics
New protein sequences are deposited in databases at an accelerating pace; however, many of these are homologous to known proteins and could be considered redundant. If all historical releases of the protein database are analysed using the original sequence‐clustering procedure described here, the fraction of newly sequenced proteins that are redundant is increasing. We interpret this as an indication that the sequencing of the Earth's proteome—the complete set of proteins on Earth—is approaching completion. We estimate the approximate size of the Earth's proteome to be 5 million sequences, most of which will be identified during the next 5 years. As the Earth's proteome nears completion, cluster analysis of the protein database will become essential to identify under‐explored taxa to which future sequencing efforts should be directed and to focus research on protein families without experimental characterization.