Database lists human genes International effort creates
resource for geneticists. 20 April 2004 HELEN PEARSON
Researchers have compiled a comprehensive catalogue of over
21,000 human genes: as many as three-quarters of the total
number of genes thought to be in our genome.
Experts say the catalogue, called the Human Full-length Complementary-
DNA Annotation Invitational Database (H-Invitational
Database), will help geneticists identify what each gene
does in the human body, including their contribution to
certain diseases.
"It is a tremendous resource," says Len Pennacchio who
studies human genomics at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in California.
Although researchers have the human genome sequence largely
in hand, they still struggle to work out which sections are
genes, the stretches of code that provide instructions for
making proteins, and which are simply filler. Computer
programs that try to predict which bits constitute genes are
notoriously unreliable.
Details of the H-Invitational Database, which was created
by an international team led by Takashi Gojobori of the
Center for Information Biology and the DNA Data Bank of
Japan in Mishima, are reported in the Public Library of
Science Biology1.
Analysis of the gene set has already thrown up some
interesting findings. It seems, for example, that the
sequences at the beginning and end of genes tend to be
longer than those in the middle, although no one yet knows
why. "There's something funky going on at the front and back
of genes," says Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics
Institute in Hinxton, Britain.
Read the rest at Nature nature.com040419Open ↗
3.html
Posted by Robert Karl Stonjek.