Scientists develop comparative search engine that helps to predict human gene function

Researchers have developed and disseminated a search engine that helps identify human gene function by comparing human genes to genes from nonhuman species.

The Human Genome Project wrapped up over a decade ago, yet around a third of the genome remains mysterious, its function unknown. Now, School of Medicine researchers have developed a comparative search engine that uses evolutionary correlations between humans and other species’ genes to help identify human gene function.

“After the human genome was sequenced, scientists thought it would be a very short time before we knew what all the genes are doing,” said Tobias Meyer, PhD, professor and chair of chemical and systems biology. “It turned out not to be so easy, and we are currently in a holding pattern before we can really make use of all the genomic information.”

Mapping how the human genome functions is like a completing a giant jigsaw puzzle. Such a map has been called the “interactome,” and having some idea about what a gene does helps identify where that gene fits in the puzzle.

“Identifying gene function is important for medicine because how genes interact with each other affects disease,” said graduate student Gautam Dey.

The search engine relies on “big data,” drawing from an international database that contains genomic sequences of hundreds of species, and is accessible via a Web page that is free and available to the public. The Web page went live Feb. 12, the same day that the paper describing the researchers’ method for gene-function mapping was published online in Cell Reports. Dey is the lead author of the paper, and Meyer is the senior author.