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Have you ever been lost? When you travel to a place unknown to you, getting lost is easy, frustrating, and discouraging – even frightening. And it’s always a waste of time. What you need is a map.

A map shows detailed information about the landscape, roads, points of interest, and distances. But just looking at the map is not enough. First of all, you need to choose the correct type of map, understand its features, read it, and most importantly, find your location on the map!

What if I tell you that there is a map of all the proteins in the human body? Would you be able to read it? 

A fundamental part of studying and understanding human biology is studying tissue-specific gene expression and protein levels.

Tissue-specific gene expression can result in the presence or absence of a certain protein, leading to the profound functional variation of biological processes among tissues.

Thus, knowing protein profiles in a given tissue is critical to understanding the unique characteristics of the various cell types and their functions in the human body.

The expression of all protein-coding genes in all major tissues and organs in the human body can be explored in an interactive database, which includes a catalog of proteins expressed in a tissue-oriented manner. It is the Tissue Atlas (1).

  

Link to Tissue Atlas

Link to HPA

Link to Polyclonals

 

Search, explore, learn, repeat

The Tissue Atlas is part of the Human Protein Atlas database, created by a Swedish-based program initiated in 2003 with the aim to map all the human proteins in cells, tissues, and organs using the integration of various -omics technologies, including antibody-based imaging, mass spectrometry-based proteomics, transcriptomics, and systems biology. 

The Tissue Atlas contains information regarding the expression profiles of human genes both on the mRNA and protein levels. The protein expression data is derived from antibody-based protein profiling using immunohistochemistry. 

Altogether 76 different cell types, corresponding to 44 normal human tissues and 20 cancer tissues, have been analyzed, and the data is presented as a knowledge-based annotation of protein expression levels. All images of immunohistochemically stained tissues are available in high resolution, free of charge.  

The protein data covers 15,317 genes (78% of all human protein-coding genes). There is at least one available antibody for each gene that targets a protein expressed by the gene.

All the data in this valuable resource is open access to allow scientists both in academia and industry to freely access the data to explore the human proteome.

Perspective matters

Depending on where you stand, the view of the world around you can look very different. The same detail can have different meanings when seen from different perspectives. Another angle allows you to make connections you were previously blind to.


In the Tissue Atlas, there are multiple search tabs and many ways to get information about a protein expression in a particular tissue. Which approach you choose to navigate the Tissue Atlas depends on what information you are looking for and where you want to direct your search. 

There are three major ways to look for information while navigating the Tissue Atlas:

1) from a gene/protein perspective 
2) from an organ/tissue perspective
3) from the proteome perspective.

Whichever angle you prefer to start your research with, you will become aware of just how much information, new insights, and wisdom about your protein or gene of interest is available.

 

1. The Gene/Protein Perspective

2. The organ/tissue proteome perspective

3. The sub-proteome perspective

 

It is not about which protein you have but how much of it you have

Tissue specificity is achieved by precise regulation of protein levels in space and time, and different tissues in the body acquire their unique characteristics by controlling not which kind of proteins are expressed but how much of each protein is produced.

A high fraction of human proteins is present in every single cell type in the human body and, surprisingly, only very few proteins are expressed in a single or a few types of cells. In other words, proteins expressed in a narrow, well-defined set of cell types are most likely important for the function of the given cells.

These findings suggest that the phenotype of a cell is determined by localization, modifications, and fluctuations in concentrations of a large portion of the proteome and not by a simple “ON/OFF” protein expression.

Explore the proteome like a boss

Now that you know how to read the Tissue Atlas and you are aware of what a great resource this protein map is, take your time to go deeper in your search but don’t stick with one perspective throughout. Explore all the ways offered to you. This makes it easier to find all the information you need. Always be sure to filter the data independently on the search input and to look at the images that support the data.