Many roads lead to the networks of systems biology, and last week’s meeting “Proteomics: The Next Grand Biological Challenge” at Vanderbilt University in Nashville provided a glimpse into how such a roadmap might be established. In three days of talks and workshops led by academics, and attended by about 240 participants, it became clear that proteomics is more than just mass spectrometry and parts lists, and that studying the function of proteins will rely on a variety of approaches.