Annotating New Genes: From In Silico Screening to Validations by Experiments

In recent years, the advent of high-throughput analytical techniques, such as microarrays and serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), has led to a rapid accumulation of biological data. The large size of databases precludes manual analysis and renders unsystematic approaches obsolete. To cope with these new challenges and to facilitate efficient data analyses, numerous academic and commercial software packages and databases have been developed. Yet, genes to which no biological function has been assigned compromise the usability of these data. To facilitate functionally annotating these so-called ‘novel genes', an in silico screening of such genes has been developed by focusing especially on their expression patterns, namely their "tissue-enrichment" and a knowledge database called "C-It" (http://c-it.mpi-bn.mpg.de/) has been developed. Emphasis has also been placed on "tissue-specific" isoforms by developing a tool to analyze Affymetrix's Exon Array, called "Exon Array Analyzer (EAA)" (http://EAA.mpi-bn.mpg.de/).

With these algorithms and tools, ~1,000 genes are currently being annotated, which are enriched in a tissue but have not been characterized. To this end, a project called "1,000 Genes Project" has been initiated to functionally annotate these evolutionary-conserved, tissue-enriched genes with unknown functions using various model organisms (mouse, chicken and zebrafish) and in vitro models (ES cells). In order to benefit from this project, we are also screening for such genes with possible relations to human diseases by incorporating SNPs information. In this conference, we would like to share some of our preliminary data on evolutionary-conserved, tissue-enriched genes with unknown function.