Accelerating the search for the missing proteins in the human proteome

The Human Proteome Project (HPP) aims to discover high-stringency data for all proteins encoded by the human genome. Currently, ∼18% of the proteins in the human proteome (the missing proteins) do not have high-stringency evidence (for example, mass spectrometry) confirming their existence, while much additional information is available about many of these missing proteins. Here, we present MissingProteinPedia as a community resource to accelerate the discovery and understanding of these missing proteins. The Human Proteome Project aims to catalogue the ∼20,000 proteins encoded by the human genome. In this review, Baker et al . focus on the missing proteins, proteins that lack high stringency proteomic evidence, and launch MissingProteinPedia, a database aimed at accelerating the search for missing proteins.