Initiative for Model Organism Proteomics (iMOP)

The initiative for Model Organism Proteomics (iMOP), active within HUPO and EuPa, aims to advance knowledge of proteins important for human health and disease, and more generally for the environment, as part of the "One-Health" concept. This goal is achieved by promoting the emergence of new model organisms suitable for i) the study of biological mechanisms important to human health and disease, ii) a better understanding of pathogenicity, pathogen reservoirs, and the emergence of resistance, and iii) deciphering the toxic effects of pollutants and exposomes on biological systems and in this context to define sensitive sentinels of our environment, or to be relevant to the One-Health concept. Furthermore, iMOP aims to characterize non-referenced proteins across various models by describing their structural features, determining their activity and function, and establishing interspecies comparisons. The application of these efforts range from Evolutionary Biology to Medicine, as well as Environmental Proteomics and Ecotoxicology. The main innovative approaches include comparative proteomics, proteogenomics, and (eco)toxicoproteomics. By fostering collaborations between biologists and multi-omics specialists and promoting multidisciplinary approaches, new scientific questions have already been tackled, including, e.g., how age and social environment both shape the molecular phenotype of animals, the deciphering of the molecular effects of inorganic compounds on various species, the identification of the initiating molecular events when model cell lines are exposed to toxic substances identifying a circadian clock in cyanobacteria, a key biological mechanism in new prokaryotic models and showing that proteogenomics can identify and characterize the structure of new coding sequences to better define their function. Overall, iMOP aims to bring together expertise to enhance our understanding of proteome at the structural and functional level to answer fundamental biological questions using the most relevant biological models. Researchers working or interested in those questions are invited to join us for discussion at this poster session and through the iMOP initiative homepages at any time (https://hupo.org/Initiative-for-Model-Organisms-Proteomics-(iMOP) or https://eupa.org/eupa-initiatives/imop/).