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A modENCODE snapshot

Nature Biotechnology volume 29, pages 238–240 (2011)Cite this article

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Since 2007 a consortium of research groups has been studying the genomes of two model organisms, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster and the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, in a project called model organism encyclopedia of DNA elements (modENCODE)1. The latest results from this project were described recently in two papers in Science2,3 and a suite of companion papers in Nature and Genome Research (http://blog.modencode.org/papers). The studies report both massive genome-scale data sets and analytic strategies for data integration. They substantially increase the annotated fractions of the fly and worm genomes and provide a wealth of data for understanding these model organisms and for developing new bioinformatic methods. Here we provide an overview of the data and some perspective from scientists on challenges for the field.

The goal of modENCODE is to catalog sequence-based functional DNA elements in the fly and worm genomes. Such a catalog may be used to study regulatory networks and other emergent properties of the genomes, and, perhaps, to better understand the human genome. The project also seeks to generate experimental reagents for use by the research community.

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References

  1. Celniker, S.E. et al. Nature 459, 927–930 (2009).

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  2. Gerstein, M.B. et al. Science 330, 1775–1787 (2010).

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  3. The modENCODE Consortium. Science 330, 1787–1797 (2010).

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  1. Associate Editors, Nature Biotechnology,

    Markus Elsner & H. Craig Mak

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  1. Markus Elsner
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  2. H. Craig Mak
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Elsner, M., Mak, H. A modENCODE snapshot. Nat Biotechnol 29, 238–240 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1806

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