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Focus
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| Data Explosion: Bringing Order to Chaos with Bioinformatics Charles W. Schmidt Abstract
Scientists say a clearer understanding of gene-toxicant interactions will provide significant new opportunities for protecting public health. But there’s a catch: these toxicogenomics promises lie hidden in mountains of data. Thanks to technology advances, the nucleotide sequences that make up DNA, in addition to the amino acid sequences that make up proteins, are collected with robotic automation and stored by the millions in vast, expanding databases throughout the world. Microarrays, which provide snapshots of thousands of expressed genes simultaneously, are also data-intensive. Years ago, when sequencing was slow and tedious, scientists could study the output manually--no more. By necessity, they now need computers and sophisticated algorithms to wade through it all.
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