Scientific Background
The brain is the most complex tissue of higher organisms, differing from other organs due to its many different cell types, its structure at the cellular and tissue level, and by the fact that one of the most important cell type in the brain, the neuron, stops dividing in adult life. Elucidating the protein complement of the brain is therefore the upper limit of a significant challenge of today’s current technologies in proteome analysis.
At the same time, the brain is of highest paramount interest in medical research and pharmaceutical industry because of the widespread societal impact of the more common neurological diseases such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, Multiple Sclerosis, Prion Diseases and Stroke. The prevalence of some of these diseases is increasingly high, e.g. every 5th person over 80 years is suffering from Alzheimer in industrial countries.
Therefore, one aim of the HUPO Brain Proteome Project is the characterization of the human and mouse brain proteomes and the use of the gainedutility of this data (identified proteins, mRNA profiles, protein/protein interactions, protein modifications and localization, validated targets) to compare in comparison to mouse models of human disease and to relevant human tissue-autopsy materials for human neurodegenerative diseases. In order to reach this goal, it is necessary to coordinate the neuroproteomic activities worldwide and to enable every participant and active member of the Hupo BPP to access all data and new technologies obtained through these studies.
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