PPI Spring Meeting 2001 - Abstract
Bioinformatics for cucumber improvement
Bruce S. Weir
Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University
There has been an explosion of genetics knowledge in the last
few years as the new mega-science projects turn out sequence data
on the genomes of several important species, including our own.
With the widespread use of laboratory robots, determining the
sequence of the chromosomes for a species such as cucumber is
becoming routine. However, making sense of all that data is a
huge problem. In a recent test of the fruit fly genome sequence,
software that was used to find genes failed to find up to 95%
of the genes, and incorrectly identified 55%.
The science of analyzing genome sequence data is known as bioinformatics.
It is one of the newest fields of science. Bioinformatics tools
are so primitive that we are not even certain how many genes there
are in the human genome. Estimates range from 27,462 to 312,278.
Bioinformatics is progressing rapidly, however. Recently, databases
have been made available on the world wide web for scientists
to use with complete genome sequences for the following species:
wild mustard, mouse, nematode, and human.
Bioinformatics will eventually provide the software to screen
genetic data from genome sequencing projects and reveal genes
of use to plant breeders and other scientists. Ultimately, it
may be possible to search routinely for genes of interest in agricultural
crops. Future researchers may want to identify genes that will
make cucumber disease resistant, seedless, machine-harvest adapted,
drought tolerant, or high in vitamin C.
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