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The art of gene function prediction

Nature Biotechnology volume 24, pages 1474–1475 (2006)Cite this article

To the editor:

Determining the functions of genes and proteins is a central problem in biology, fundamental to understanding the molecular and biochemical processes that sustain health or cause disease, to identifying and validating new drug targets and to developing reliable diagnostics. Recent advances in genomic sequencing have generated an astounding number of new putative genes and hypothetical proteins whose biological function remains a mystery. On average, as many as 70% of the genes in a genome have poorly known or no known functions1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 660 McBryde Hall, Blacksburg, 24061, Virginia, USA

    T M Murali

  2. Boston University, Bioinformatics Program, 24 Cummington St., Boston, 02215, Massachusetts, USA

    Chang-Jiun Wu & Simon Kasif

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 44 Cummington Street, Boston, 02215, Massachusetts, USA

    Simon Kasif

  4. Children's Hospital, Boston, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, 02215, Massachusetts, USA

    Simon Kasif

Authors
  1. T M Murali
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  2. Chang-Jiun Wu
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  3. Simon Kasif
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Contributions

T.M.M., C.-J.W. and S.K. contributed equally to this work.

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Murali, T., Wu, CJ. & Kasif, S. The art of gene function prediction. Nat Biotechnol 24, 1474–1475 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1206-1474

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