최현일 (220 4137)
Discovering Organ-Specific Genes Using the EST Sequence Database
by B.K. Lee (National Institute of Health)
November 13th 4pm 전남의대 본관 1층 교수회의실
Organ-specific genes are those that encode differentiation antigens, which are expressed in certain tissues only and not in others. Differentiation antigens can be used as markers of the organ and can be useful for imaging, for specific delivery of drugs, and for specific killing of harmful cells. The challenging problem is to find these organ-specific genes among the 30,000 to 60,000 genes that are believed to exist in human genome. There are several methods for finding organ-specific genes. I will describe an EST-based method that we have been using to find prostate- and breast-specific genes. ESTs (Expressed Sequence Tags) are relatively short cDNA sequences that are derived from mRNAs of various tissues. Currently there are some 5 million human EST sequences in the public database. The method consists of finding candidate genes using bioinformatics techniques and then experimentally verifying them. This work is a collaboration between a computer group and a molecular biology group. I will describe only the work of the computer group.
The bioinformatics technique involves clustering ESTs, assigning organ-specificity to each cluster, and sorting the clusters according to the organ-specificity and the cluster size. I will describe a simple new clustering procedure that uses the alignment of ESTs to the draft human genome sequence. I will then briefly highlight interesting features of some of the new genes found by this method. The talk will bring out the role of bioinformatics in a truly collaborative effort to discover potentially useful genes.