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).