Genome Research

Genome Research

Focus on Genome Research

The genomic approach of technology development and large-scale generation of community resource data sets has introduced an important new dimension in biological and biomedical research. Interwoven advances in genetics, comparative genomics, high throughput biochemistry and bioinformatics are combining to attack basic understanding of human life and disease and to develop strategies to combat disease. Genomic Research began with The Human Genome Project (HGP), the international research effort that determined the DNA sequence of the entire human genome, completed in April 2003. The HGP also included efforts to characterize and sequence the entire genomes of several other organisms, many of which are used extensively in biological research. Identification of the sequence or function of genes in a model organism is an important approach to finding and elucidating the function of human genes. Integral to the HGP are similar efforts to understand the genomes of various organisms commonly used in biomedical research, such as mice, fruit flies and roundworms. Such organisms are called "model organisms," because they can often serve as research models for how the human organism behaves. This new book brings together leading research from throughout the world in this cutting-edge field.

Computational Methods in Genome Research

The application of computational methods to solve scientific and pratical problems in genome research created a new interdisciplinary area that transcends boundaries traditionally separating genetics, biology, mathematics, physics, and computer science. Computers have been, of course, intensively used for many year~ in the field of life sciences, even before genome research started, to store and analyze DNA or proteins sequences, to explore and model the three-dimensional structure, the dynamics and the function of biopolymers, to compute genetic linkage or evolutionary processes etc. The rapid development of new molecular and genetic technologies, combined with ambitious goals to explore the structure and function of genomes of higher organisms, has generated, however, not only a huge and burgeoning body of data but also a new class of scientific questions. The nature and complexity of these questions will require, beyond establishing a new kind of alliance between experimental and theoretical disciplines, also the development of new generations both in computer software and hardware technologies, respectively. New theoretical procedures, combined with powerful computational facilities, will substantially extend the horizon of problems that genome research can ·attack with success. Many of us still feel that computational models rationalizing experimental findings in genome research fulfil their promises more slowly than desired. There also is an uncertainity concerning the real position of a 'theoretical genome research' in the network of established disciplines integrating their efforts in this field.