They got the liver, we got the brain
Germans lead Human Brain Proteome Project, major findings on Alzheimer and Parkinson expected

By Christian Schwägerl
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

27. August 2003

During a recent visit to Leipzig, the co-decoder of DNA,  James Watson, described Germany as a dwarf in biological research. Now, however, German researchers are to lead the international Human Brain Proteome Project, which aims to decode all proteins of the human brain: Helmut Meyer of Bochum's Ruhr University and Joachim Klose of the Virchow Clinics of Humboldt University in Berlin.
The venture to identify all brain-specific proteins and discover their functions will be a crucial step in neurological research, the scientists said, and Watson would agree. Asked in Leipzig what he would consider a future biological discovery which could be more important than his own, he responded quickly: “How the brain stores information is the biggest mystery to me. How on earth can I recall an incident which took place 20 or 30 years ago? Whoever finds that out will go down in history.“
It is still a long way to go until then, but the route might lead through the Virchow Clinics and University Street in Bochum and to the doors of two researchers determined to open up a scientific treasury. While neurological research has made some important headway, scientists believe the mysterious world of the brain will only be fully understood once all the ingredients and their interactions have been identified, molecule by molecule. And what is missing so far is a detailed inventory of all the brain's molecules, a neuronal Watson-Crick project, so to speak. This is what researchers are working on in Bochum and Berlin.
Whatever happens in the brain, from the - relatively - simple control of one's muscles to the development of self-confidence, proteins always play a pivotal role. They open up or close the ion channels of excitement, enable messengers like serotonin or nicotine to hook up to the brain's synapses, and establish and break off connections between nerve cells. Many serious neurological diseases like Huntington's, Alzheimer's or Creutzfeldt-Jakob are related to protein defects.
Yet little is known about the most colorful and most subtle level of brain functions. While single proteins have been described, scientists are still lacking a complete overview, and are determined to get one.
A long avenue leads from Augustenburger Platz in the Berlin district of Wedding through the Virchow Clinics' campus to Research House No. 4, where Joachim Klose works at the Institute for Human Genetics. A calm and pensive man who appears to have little in common with the assertive character of genetic engineering gurus like Graig Venter, Klose is not a neurobiologist in the strict sense but rather a pioneer in protein research. He is an expert when it comes to identifying and describing the proteins of body cells.
Klose and his colleague in Bochum, Helmut Meyer, who heads the Medical Proteome Center at the very end of Bochum's University Street, have achieved something rather sensational: In an international competition, they made sure that Germany would lead the large international project to create an inventory of all brain proteins.
“The Chinese are doing the liver, the Americans got the blood plasma and we got the brain,“ said Klose, adding that it was a great success for a country in which researchers are still sobered by the realization that they only contributed 2 percent to the decoding of the human genome.
Germany is much better prepared for the time after the genome project. “Our first projects on neuroproteomics had already started to receive funding from the German Research Ministry in mid-2001. In America, the planning only started in late 2002,“ added Meyer, not succeeding completely in concealing his excitement.
The project involves 125 research teams across the world and is organized by the international Human Proteome Organization (HUPO), which was founded three years ago. HUPO is headed by molecular biologist Samir Hansh of the University of Michigan and has set itself the goal of discovering all human proteins. When Meyer and Klose applied to the HUPO board to work on the brain and were approved almost immediately, they were stunned by their own success, and have been very busy since. They convened a first meeting of all major research nations in Frankfurt in May, and a full-scale project launch meeting is scheduled for early next month in Düsseldorf.
Meyer and Klose currently estimate that there are about 12,000 proteins in the human brain containing key information on serious diseases and on the almost metaphysical question of what makes a human being human.
The Human Brain Proteome Project will depend on a number of suppliers: tissue banks for brain samples, protein structure factories for 3D models, system biologists for the description of cells, and bio-computer scientists who can control the masses of data. An early challenge will be defining something approximating the healthy standard of the human brain and comparing it to that of a mouse. After that it will be about identifying the typical changes in the protein structure of patients who suffer from Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, or who have suffered a stroke.
Later research will focus on the differences  between  men  and women and between apes and humans, but Klose said there was a lot of work to be done before then.
“We are like Darwin when he still looked upon the huge world of organisms without being able to make out a structure,“ the scientist admitted.