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Comment
. 2014 Aug 1;13(8):3854-5.
doi: 10.1021/pr500572z. Epub 2014 Jul 16.

Analyzing the first drafts of the human proteome

Iakes Ezkurdia, Jesús Vázquez, Alfonso Valencia  1 , Michael Tress  1
Affiliations
Comment

Analyzing the first drafts of the human proteome

Iakes Ezkurdia et al. J Proteome Res. .

Erratum in

Abstract

This letter analyzes two large-scale proteomics studies published in the same issue of Nature. At the time of the release, both studies were portrayed as draft maps of the human proteome and great advances in the field. As with the initial publication of the human genome, these papers have broad appeal and will no doubt lead to a great deal of further analysis by the scientific community. However, we were intrigued by the number of protein-coding genes detected by the two studies, numbers that far exceeded what has been reported for the multinational Human Proteome Project effort. We carried out a simple quality test on the data using the olfactory receptor family. A high-quality proteomics experiment that does not specifically analyze nasal tissues should not expect to detect many peptides for olfactory receptors. Neither of the studies carried out experiments on nasal tissues, yet we found peptide evidence for more than 100 olfactory receptors in the two studies. These results suggest that the two studies are substantially overestimating the number of protein coding genes they identify. We conclude that the experimental data from these two studies should be used with caution.

Keywords: Nature; human proteome; olfactory receptors; protein coding genes; proteomics.

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Comment on

  • A draft map of the human proteome.
    Kim MS, Pinto SM, Getnet D, Nirujogi RS, Manda SS, Chaerkady R, Madugundu AK, Kelkar DS, Isserlin R, Jain S, Thomas JK, Muthusamy B, Leal-Rojas P, Kumar P, Sahasrabuddhe NA, Balakrishnan L, Advani J, George B, Renuse S, Selvan LD, Patil AH, Nanjappa V, Radhakrishnan A, Prasad S, Subbannayya T, Raju R, Kumar M, Sreenivasamurthy SK, Marimuthu A, Sathe GJ, Chavan S, Datta KK, Subbannayya Y, Sahu A, Yelamanchi SD, Jayaram S, Rajagopalan P, Sharma J, Murthy KR, Syed N, Goel R, Khan AA, Ahmad S, Dey G, Mudgal K, Chatterjee A, Huang TC, Zhong J, Wu X, Shaw PG, Freed D, Zahari MS, Mukherjee KK, Shankar S, Mahadevan A, Lam H, Mitchell CJ, Shankar SK, Satishchandra P, Schroeder JT, Sirdeshmukh R, Maitra A, Leach SD, Drake CG, Halushka MK, Prasad TS, Hruban RH, Kerr CL, Bader GD, Iacobuzio-Donahue CA, Gowda H, Pandey A. Kim MS, et al. Nature. 2014 May 29;509(7502):575-81. doi: 10.1038/nature13302. Nature. 2014. PMID: 24870542 Free PMC article.
  • Mass-spectrometry-based draft of the human proteome.
    Wilhelm M, Schlegl J, Hahne H, Gholami AM, Lieberenz M, Savitski MM, Ziegler E, Butzmann L, Gessulat S, Marx H, Mathieson T, Lemeer S, Schnatbaum K, Reimer U, Wenschuh H, Mollenhauer M, Slotta-Huspenina J, Boese JH, Bantscheff M, Gerstmair A, Faerber F, Kuster B. Wilhelm M, et al. Nature. 2014 May 29;509(7502):582-7. doi: 10.1038/nature13319. Nature. 2014. PMID: 24870543

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