The Genome Knowledgebase: A Resource for Biologists and Bioinformaticists

Biological science now has access to the sequencedgenomes of dozens of organisms spanning the phylogenetic gamut from prokaryotes (Fleischmann et al. 1995)to people (Lander et al. 2001). We have reasonable estimates on the number and nature of most of the proteincoding genes, a fact that has radically changed the natureof gene hunting from an activity that is primarily done atthe bench to one that is mostly done using the computer.Our knowledge of the genome contents is augmented byhigh-throughput experimental techniques such as expression chips (DeRisi et al. 1997) and yeast two-hybrid studies (Fields and Song 1989) for probing protein interactions and regulatory networks...