Two teams of scientists are publishing today first drafts of the human proteome. The proteome is a catalog of all of the different proteins the human body makes. This is a big accomplishment. How big? Let’s look at some numbers from just one team:

The scientists in this team searched for proteins all over the human body. They searched in samples from 17 bodily organs, including the frontal cortex of the brain, the retina in the eye, ovaries, testes and more. In addition, the scientists analyzed six types of cells found in the blood and seven samples taken from organs in human fetuses. The samples came from nine people altogether.