Genome Biology Program
The identification of the complete set of functions of any organism provides the foundation upon which our understanding of the biology of that organism rests. In essence, it forms the basic framework that any genome project targets, and from which any biological interpretation originates. However, while the quality and quantity of sequencing data has dramatically increased during the last few years, their interpretation remains a major bottleneck. In fact, as more and more microbes are sequenced, the scientific community's efforts to assign functions to genes are lagging. In addition the importance of comparative analysis and extensive sequence integration for a comprehensive genome analysis and reconstruction of the functional cellular subsystems (e.g. metabolic pathways, information processes etc.) has been largely overlooked by most contemporary genome databases. To speed up annotation, group members are developing software tools for determining microbial gene function.
The Genome Biology Program includes
- The development of an Integrated Microbial Genome (IMG) system for interpreting the newly sequenced genomes and for the analysis of existing genomic sequence data on a comparative level.
- The development of new tools and strategies that can be used for the prediction of gene functions.
- The development of functional classification schemes for microbial organisms.
Members
Genome Biology Program members: (left to right) Edwin Kim (former member), Sean Hooper, Iain Anderson, Nikos Kyrpides, Natalia Ivanova, Natalia Mikhailova, Athanasios Lykidis, and Konstantinos Mavrommatis
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