Size doesnt matter 英文参考文献.docVIP

/2001/2/3/comment/1003.1 Comment Size doesn’t matter Gregory A Petsko Address: Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110, USA. E-mail: petsko@ Published: 28 February 2001 GenomeBiology 2001, 2(3):comment1003.1–1003.2 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2001/2/3/comment/1003 ? BioMed Central Ltd (Print ISSN 1465-6906; Online ISSN 1465-6914) So now we know. The first ‘official’ count of the number of genes in the human genome is in, and the total is smaller than almost anyone had imagined. Sorting out the pseudo- genes from the real ones will take some time, so the number may increase a bit, but it seems clear that the genome of Homo sapiens contains fewer than 40,000 genes, with the final number probably being closer to 30,000. Quibble about the exact count if you will, but the total will probably not approach even half the 80,000-100,000 estimate that was widely bandied about when the Human Genome Project began. But the size of the proteome is another thing altogether. No one knows how many different proteins make up the com- plete ensemble of human gene products, but current esti- mates range from 100,000 to several times this number (of course, we should remember that the number of human genes was once estimated to be that large too). This is in stark contrast with the situation for simpler organisms. For most bacteria, the relationship between genes and proteins is approximately 1:1, as indicated by the number of proteins that can be resolved on big two-dimensional gels. Yeast and other microbial eukaryotes would seem to be similar in this respect. But for metazoa, especially vertebrates and even more especially mammals, there is considerable expansion of the proteome relative to the genome. What a blow to our collective ego as a specie