The dream of having genomes completely sequenced is now a reality. The
complete sequence of many genomes including the human one is known.
However, the understanding of probably half a million human proteins
encoded by less than 30'000 genes is still a long way away and the hard work
to unravel the complexity of biological systems is yet to come. A new
fundamental concept called proteome (PROTEin complement to a genOME) has
recently emerged that should drastically help to unravel
biochemical and physiological mechanisms of complex multivariate
diseases at the functional molecular level. The discipline of
proteomics has been initiated to complement physical genomic
research. Proteomics can be defined as the qualitative and quantitative
comparison of proteomes under different conditions to further unravel
biological processes.