Genomic data are growing, but what do we really know?
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 13:01
in Biology & Nature
"We live in the post-genomic era, when DNA sequence data is growing exponentially", says Miami University (Ohio) computational biologist Iddo Friedberg. "But for most of the genes that we identify, we have no idea of their biological functions. They are like words in a foreign language, waiting to be deciphered." Understanding the function of genes is a problem that has emerged at the forefront of molecular biology. Many groups develop and employ sophisticated algorithms to decipher these "words". However, until now there was no comprehensive picture of how well these methods perform, "To use the information in our genes to our advantage, we first need to take stock of how well we are doing in interpreting these data".