Introduction/Procedure: Before biotech and genomics, scientists studied animal behavior, habitat, and diet to distinguish the relationships between species. These conclusions were often wrong because factors such as behavior do not show how genetically close two species are. Just like genomics is the study of genes, proteomics is the study of proteins. However, proteomics is much more complex than genomics. While genome is rather consistent, the proteome is differs from cell to cell. In addition, the proteome regularly changes through biochemical transactions. Organisms can have drastic differences in protein expression during different life cycles, different parts of the body, and different environmental conditions. Scientists belive that much of the noncoding DNA functions to highly regulate protein production. The main component separating us from other organisms is our complex proteomes, not our genes. In our lab (the sushi lab) we will be taking a sample of fish and use proteomics to find the relation between different species. The first step of our lab is to denature the proteins using heat and or chemicals. Next, we will run them on a protein gel. Once the gel is finished we will analyze the results. The more similar that the bands on the gel are, the more related the species are.
