Researchers have successfully catalogued more than 18,000 human proteins – giving new insights into human biology, it was announced last night.
The list is thought to include 92% of all human proteins, researchers say.
The researchers say that 10,000 of the proteins are busy with "housekeeping" in the human body.
But they also identified hundreds of unexpected new proteins that appeared not to be linked to any known genes, they report in Nature.
And they were unable to find some 2,000 proteins that should have been produced by genes on the human gene map.
The researchers from the Technische Universität München, Germany, say some of these proteins may be involved in the development of the human embryo.
But others might be non-functional, for instance some involving the sense of smell, which is not as sophisticated in humans as in many other mammals.
Researcher Professor Bernhard Küster said: "We might be watching evolution in action here. The human organism deactivates superfluous genes – and tests new gene prototypes at the same time."
He added: "This edges us a little bit closer to the individualised treatment of patients. If we knew the protein profile of a tumour in detail, we might be able to administer drugs in a more targeted way.
"The new insights also allow medical researchers to investigate combinations of drugs and, thereby, tailoring treatments even more closely to a patient’s individual needs.”
Mass-spectrometry-based draft of the human proteome. Nature 29 May 2014; doi:10.1038/nature13319
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