Bioinformatics for the Korean Functional Genomics Project

Genomic approach produces massive amount of data within a short time period, New high-throughput automatic sequencers can generate over a million nucleotide sequence information overnight. A typical DNA chip experiment produces tens of thousands expression information, not to mention the tens of megabyte image files, These data must be handled automatically by computer and stored in electronic database, Thus there is a need for systematic approach of data collection, processing, and analysis. DNA sequence information is translated into amino acid sequence and is analyzed for key motif related to its biological and/or biochemical function. Functional genomics will play a significant role in identifying novel drug targets and diagnostic markers for serious diseases. As an enabling technology for functional genomics, bioinformatics is in great need worldwide, In Korea, a new functional genomics project has been recently launched and it focuses on identi☞ing genes associated with cancers prevalent in Korea, namely gastric and hepatic cancers, This involves gene discovery by high throughput sequencing of cancer cDNA libraries, gene expression profiling by DNA microarray and proteomics, and SNP profiling in Korea patient population, Our bioinformatics team will support all these activities by collecting, processing and analyzing these data.