Comparative genomics approaches to identifying functionally related genes

Abstract

The rapid progress in genome sequencing makes it possible to address fundamental problems of biology and achieve critical insights into the functioning of the live cells and entire organisms. However, the widening gap between the rapidly accumulating sequence data and our ability to properly annotate these data constitutes a major problem that slows down the progress of genome biology. This paper discusses the notion of "function" as it relates to computational biology, lists the most common ways of assigning function to the new genes, particularly those that specifically rely on comparative genome analysis, and briefly reviews the drawbacks of the current algorithms for semi-automated high-throughput functional annotation of genomes. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.