ENCODE - Functional analysis of the human genome

EN: The ENCODE-project presents the results of the functional analysis of 1% of the human genome [1]. I have not have the time to read it completely so far but listened to a talk by Ewan Birney at EMBL on Tuesday. The approach might be the prototype of how some of the big questions in biology have to be solved - in huge consortia (308 authors contributed to this publication). 30 Mbp (1%) of the human genome were analyzed using different wet-lab techniques and intra- and inter-species sequence comparisons. One result of the integration of all this is that there is much more (10fold) transcription going on than reported before, but not all of the transcripts contain genes. The plan to extent the analysis to the full genome is currently reviewed.

[1] Identification and analysis of functional elements in 1% of the human genome by the ENCODE pilot project, Nature 447, 799-816 (14 June 2007)