Genome‐, transcriptome‐ and proteome‐wide measurements provide insights into how biological systems are regulated. However, fundamental aspects relating to which human proteins exist, where they are expressed and in which quantities are not fully understood. Therefore, we generated a quantitative proteome and transcriptome abundance atlas of 29 paired healthy human tissues from the Human Protein Atlas project representing human genes by 18,072 transcripts and 13,640 proteins including 37 without prior protein‐level evidence. The analysis revealed that hundreds of proteins, particularly in testis, could not be detected even for highly expressed mRNAs, that few proteins show tissue‐specific expression, that strong differences between mRNA and protein quantities within and across tissues exist and that protein expression is often more stable across tissues than that of transcripts. Only 238 of 9,848 amino acid variants found by exome sequencing could be confidently detected at the protein level showing that proteogenomics remains challenging, needs better computational methods and requires rigorous validation. Many uses of this resource can be envisaged including the study of gene/protein expression regulation and biomarker specificity evaluation.

TT-Seq maps a transient transcriptome: RNA expression is related to protein abundance and cellular function. However, the amounts of RNA generated at any one time-point have been difficult to determine. Schwalb et al. developed a method, transient transcriptome sequencing (TT-Seq), to collect and sequence all RNA segments synthesized over 5 minutes. Because 5 minutes is not long enough to fully degrade even the most transient RNA, this method can detect the synthesis of most RNA without bias. Applying this method to human K562 cells, TT-Seq detected thousands of noncoding transcripts, providing a snapshot of RNA synthesis rates and RNA half-lives, and full-length maps of short-lived RNAs such as enhancers and short intergenic noncoding RNAs. Science , this issue p. 1225