Genomics, Proteomics and Beyond: Meeting the Information Needs of Bioinformatics Researchers

摘要

The Human Genome Project has been called the single most important project in biology and the biomedical sciences, and is considered to be one that will permanently change biology and medicine. As a result of this project and related research initiatives, vast amounts of biological sequence data (both genes and proteins) have been compiled in a myriad of databases. In addition, a diverse range of software tools have been developed to manipulate and analyze the biological data. The need to manage this array of information resources has led to the rapid expansion of the field of bioinformatics, which encompasses the generation, handling, storage, retrieval and analysis of biological sequence data. The number of individual bioinformatics resources, both databases and software tools, is around six hundred. These resources are dynamic, complex, diverse, and non-standardized. Unlike traditional bibliographic databases, bioinformatics resources must be capable of storing, manipulating and analyzing vast quantities of non-textual biological information. A SIG/BC panel at the 1992 ASIS conference focused on the genome project, then in its infancy, and discussed the challenges of sequencing the human and other genomes. The completion of a "working draft" of the human genome sequence, announced in June 2000, marked a significant milestone. The next great challenge is to make sense of the huge amounts of data that have been compiled. Biological research is shifting away from a focus on generating sequence, towards a new focus on understanding what that sequence means. Among the new challenges will be to identify what gene is coded by a particular sequence, what the protein it creates does, how it functions in the organism, and how it interacts with other genes. This new "sequence-based" biology will require a solid bioinformatics infrastructure to make the required information accessible and usable. In this session, speakers representing academia, industry, and government will discuss the challenges posed by these vast, complex information resources from their different perspectives. Topics discussed will include the current and future information needs of bioinformatics researchers, accessibility and use of available information resources and services, and anticipated problems that must be solved as research moves from the relatively "simple" world of gene sequencing to the more complex world of protein structure and function.