The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, US, has announced that the international team of the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) project has created an overview of its ongoing large-scale efforts to interpret the human genome sequence. The April 19 publication of "A User's Guide to the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements" in the journal PLoS Biology provides a guide for using the vast amounts of data and resources produced so far by the project. All of the data, tools to study them, and the paper itself are freely available through multiple websites accessible through encodeproject.org.
The publication is said to demonstrate how ENCODE data can be immediately useful in interpreting associations between single nucleotides and disease, using examples such as the c-Myc gene and cancer. Similar studies are now possible for the thousands of variants identified in genome-wide association studies, addressing mechanistic questions of susceptibility to disease, it is believed.
ENCODE scientists are applying up to 20 different tests in 108 commonly used cell lines to compile the data. The current paper seeks to tell how to find the data, and also explain how to apply the data to interpret the human genome. The project is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.
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