National Center for Proteomics Official

The word "proteomics" was coined in early 1990s by Marc Wilkins. The term is an alternative to the phrase "the protein complement of the genome". The word "proteome" is now firmly established in mainstream scientific vernacular, and is the key technology in post-genomic era.

Proteomics is the systematic study of the many and diverse properties of proteins in a parallel manner with the aim of providing detailed descriptions of the structure function and control of biological systems in health and disease. Advances in methods and technologies have catalyzed an expansion of the scope of biological studies from the reductionist biochemical analysis of single proteins to proteome-wide measurements. Proteomics and other complementary methods are essential components of the emerging 'systems biology' approach that seeks to comprehensively describe biological systems through integration of diverse types of data and, in the future, to ultimately allow computational simulations of complex biological systems.

Establishment of national centre for proteomics at University of Karachi is a milestone in field of biological sciences in Pakistan. The aim is to make use of recent revolutionary breakthroughs in the technologies of proteomics and implementing these in relevant areas of biological research. The mandate of the institute is to serve as a core facility to fulfill the investigators' and researchers' needs related to area of proteomics and allied sciences including biochemists, cell biologists, pharmacologists and clinicians.