Transcending the Genome: The Paradigm Shift to Proteomics - Flagship Project
Findings
Interim Findings
The aim of this CESAGen Flagship Project is to characterise knowledge production in the wake of the Human Genome Project through study of the emergent field of proteomics. Methods include experimentation with IssueCrawler software to locate proteomics networks (NWs) on the World Wide Web (WWW). As well as contributing to the sociology of scientific knowledge, project findings have implications for UK policy in the context of the importance placed on the biosciences for competitiveness in the global knowledge economy.
- Proteomics NWs typically comprise the websites of: national and international proteomics societies; mass spec societies; electrophoresis societies; journals; commercial equipment and reagent vendors; conferences; research projects and centres; and bioinformatics tools. Indicates that the proteomics community is global, heterogeneous and transcends the laboratory.
- .com websites in the NW are typically lab equipment / reagent / software vendors. Absence of vendors of proteomics products e.g. pharmas. Indicates NW immaturity.
- Very few .gov websites. Indicates that proteomics actors do not recognize governmental organizations as being relevant, especially as agents of regulation. Indicator of NW immaturity.
- Total absence of NGO websites. Indicates lack of social controversy. Substantiated by the fact that there is no ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues) in HUPO (Human Proteome Organisation). Unlike genes, proteins don’t have a 'social life'. Consistent with very few .gov websites in the NW. Implies that proteomics has different social relations to genomics (and nanotechnology?).
- National and international proteomics societies play key profile-raising, coordination and educational roles in the transition from protein biochemistry to proteomics. Highest density in Europe; then Asia/Oceania – but not India. Recently HUPO has extended to Latin America.
- USA has played major role in HUPO, but largest single sponsor of any HUPO Initiative to date is the government of China. European Proteomics Association (EuPA) recently formed to raise proteomics profile in Europe, especially at the European Union.
- The population, management and manipulation of digitalised databases is the sine qua non of the omic knowledge-scape and differentiates it from preceding research in the biosciences.
- A core goal of HUPO’s Human Proteome Project is the compilation of community-wide, large-scale data sets. But several obstacles currently exist including: lack of incentives for public and private lab practitioners to deposit their data; absence of agreed standards for data and data reporting; and lack of dedicated funding for the long-term sustainability of databases once no longer classified as a research activity.
- The latter may accentuate the distribution of database curation to grey, part-time, female and developing world labour markets.
- The centrality of databases is driving a bioinformatics standardisation process, which simultaneously provides the conditions of possibility for the performance of bioinformatics, and for the definition of quality and the exercise of quality control, including attending to the scientific norm that the production of proteomics data should, in principle, be replicable. In other words, the construction of omic databases is a technology for defining and disciplining the fields, and indeed for constructing the omics as disciplines.
- IssueCrawler NWs resemble protein-protein interaction NWs in proteomics. An example of 'sociomics' – convergent knowledge production between the social sciences and the omic 'disciplines'. Suggests avenues for exploring interdisciplinary collaborative research.
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