Cardiovascular diseases are among the leading cause of death in the developed world. To acquire a better molecular understanding of cardiac diseases and develop novel treatment strategies, it is essential to perform experimental studies in model organisms. However, translating findings between humans and model organisms is a major challenge.
The Cardiac Proteome resource is a knowledge base on cardiac protein expression across species, aiming to fill this knowledge gap. The basis behind this database is a global analysis of cardiac protein expression in humans and commonly used model organisms across cardiac chambers using quantitative proteomics. We measured ~7,000 proteins in humans, mouse, rat, pig, horse and zebrafish, and created a global comparison of cardiac protein expression across species. The data is accessible in this open-access online database, enabling scientist to query specific protein profiles across species and thereby facilitate knowledge transfer and translational prospect of cardiac studies from model organisms to humans.
We map all evidence to common protein identifiers and Brenda Tissue Ontology terms, and further unify it by assigning confidence scores that facilitate comparison of the different species. We finally visualize these scores on a schematic heart to provide a convenient overview.