Biologists study the interactions of genes and proteins to develop an understanding of cells. Genes are segments of DNA that code for proteins.
Proteins are the gene products that carry out specific functions in a cell.
While DNA is identical in all cells of an organism, the proteins present in a cell uniquely determine the state of the cell, such as whether that cell is cancerous. Previously, genes and proteins were painstakingly identified through molecular biology and biochemistry techniques. However, in the last decade, there has been an explosion of added data in DNA and protein databases. These databases help biologists design experiments and eliminate needless work. Ten years ago, if a biologist discovered a protein but did not know its function, he would conduct a myriad of experiments to find the protein's function.