Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Human Genome Program
Human Genome News Archive Edition
In this issue...
Also available in pdf.
1997 Santa Fe Highlights
Human Genome Project Administration
In the News
Software and the Internet
Meeting Calendars & Acronyms
Making Genome Data Useful in Medicine
At the informatics meeting, Anne Spence (University of California, Irvine), provided some insights into challenges facing medical geneticists who use genome data. She stressed the need to capture already discovered knowledge and make it easily available. She noted that a typical query to databases might be, "Tell me everything about gene X."
Currently, this type of query would involve interrogating several Web sites, not always interlinked and often containing uncurated data of varying reliability. What medical geneticists need, she observed, is a user-friendly database of diseases and gene entries with links to other resources; regular rapid updates; and accurate, curated, and annotated information and population data.
The electronic form of the newsletter may be cited in the following
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international 13-year effort, 1990 to 2003. Primary goals were to discover the complete set of human genes and make them accessible for further biological study, and determine the complete sequence of DNA bases in the human genome. See Timeline for more HGP history.
Published from 1989 until 2002, this newsletter facilitated HGP communication, helped prevent duplication of research effort, and informed persons interested in genome research.