In order to maximally utilize information of human genome very recently determined, it is necessary to arrange and construct the comprehensive fact-databases for peptides and proteins functioning in the tissue and body.
As for the proteins, Proteome project has been started mainly in Europe. In the case of the peptides, however, no project for the database has ever been planned, as peptides are easy to be degraded and have many problems for the uniform treatments. Thus, we have set up the project that peptides in the cells, tissues and body are extracted as they are, classified based on their physicochemical properties, determined their sequences, and registered in the database with information of biological activity, receptors, natural abundance, 3-dimensional structure and so on.
The database, named "Peptidome", will store data and information for all endogenous peptides that exist at more than substantial concentrations, and can be searched not only with their names or amino acid sequences but also with their physicochemical properties, natural abundance, biological activities and so on.
All the information of endogenous peptides are expected to be integrated into this fact-database, which can be utilized for elucidation of pathogenesis, development of diagnoses, clinical examinations, treatments and new drugs for diseases. Furthermore, this peptide database will function as an intellectual infrastructure for the researches in medicine, pharmaceutical sciences and biology. During the process of the accumulating information and data of endogenous peptides, all the unidentified bioactive peptides could be discovered.
This project is supported by the Special Coordination Fund for the Promotion of Science and Technology from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. In addition to National Cardiovascular Center Research Institute (principal research institute), Osaka University, Protein Research Foundation, Gakushuin University, National Cancer Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Suntory Institute for Bioorganic Research participate in this project.