PRIDE: an open source database of protein identifications

The European Bioinformatics Institute and Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology-Ghent University have launched the PRoteomics IDEntifications database (PRIDE; www.ebi.ac.uk/pride). PRIDE allows researchers who work in the field of proteomics - the large-scale study of proteins - to share information much more readily than was previously possible. This will allow them to exploit the growing mass of information on how the body's complement of proteins is altered in many disease states, paving the way towards new predictive and diagnostic methods in medicine.

Proteomics is the identification and characterisation of all the proteins produced by a particular type of cell, tissue or organism under certain conditions. While an individual's genome remains the same from one moment to the next, proteomes are extremely dynamic.

Proteomics has great potential, not only for helping us to understand how our environment affects the healthy body, but also for understanding disease mechanisms and developing new ways of diagnosing disease. Although the high-throughput identification of proteins is gathering momentum, until recently there was no straightforward means of sharing or comparing the results.

Large sets of data already available in PRIDE include the results of the Human Proteome Organisation's Plasma Proteome Project, and a human platelet proteome set published by Ghent University. The results of other international collaborations, such as the Human Proteome Organisation's Liver Proteome Project, will follow as they are published. PRIDE is completely open source: the PRIDE database, source code, data and support tools are freely available for web access or download and local installation.