Genomics Vs. Proteomics

[pankilpatel]

Guys,

 

What are some general questions that proteomics can answer that genomics cannot? Please if you can give some examples to that.

 

Thank you for reading,

Pankil Patel.

[CharonY]

Think about dynamics. What is more stable in short time frames, the proteome or the genome?

[herbbread]

Genetics gives you what is possible, proteomics gives you what actually is. Just because a particular gene exists doesn't mean it's being expressed, and even if it's being expressed, it doesn't tell you anything about how much it's being expressed. Proteomics has the potential to quantify the proteins in a cell (and proteins are the vast majority of the molecules that do something). For example, let's say you find an allele gene that is involved in tumorgenesis. Just because the gene exists in your given tissue doesn't mean that tissue is cancerous. But if you find the protein product of the gene being expressed, and that protein is a biomarker of cancer, then you might be able to say something about whether a tumor is present or not.

[CharonY]

First part hits the nail on its head. The example (as described) does not appear to be proteomics workflow per se. It addresses the expression of a single protein whereas proteomics is generally referring the whole set of proteins (or rather as much as we can technically get).

[herbbread]

Right, so proteomics might refer to a given combination of a large number of upregulated and downregulated proteins as a potential biomarker for cancer rather than the expression of a single protein product? My girlfriend would be ashamed that I don't know what proteomics is.

[CharonY]

For instance. So basically the overall proteome profile (or at least subsets of it). There are a huge numbers of applications and methodologies. But the basis is that it involves monitoring the presence and often the (relative or absolute) abundance of a large set of proteins (i.e. the proteome).

 

Biomarker is a special area, though I could rant all day about the problems.