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Researchers to publish a third historic human genome article in Genome Biology this week   12 February 2000

A small team of researchers from the Ohio State University (OSU) is set to advance genome research by publishing a third annotation of the human genome this Friday (16th February) in the journal Genome Biology. The researchers, funded by the US government and the Solove Research Foundation, have developed better ways of identifying genes - enabling them to carry-out and publish their research in less than 8 months. The findings of the team of 13 will complement the work of Celera and the public Human Genome Project (HGP), who also publish articles this week.

The team's gene index was developed using sequence data made available by the public Human Genome Project together with extensive computational analysis of other public data sources. The index allowed the researchers to identify the complement of 30,000 genes reported this week by Celera and the HGP, but also described 35,000-45,000 additional putative genes for further investigation. This suggests that the number of genes in the human genome is between 65,000 and 75,000 - a figure close to original predictions made over the past decade.

The OSU Genome Team, lead by Dr Bo Yuan together with Dr Fred Wright, will become only the third group of researchers to publish a complete description of the human book of life. Yuan's group had been involved in a project to decipher a single chromosome earlier in 2000. "Following the White House press conference on June 26 last year, we debated for only 2 minutes whether we should continue annotating the rest of the human genome," Dr Yuan recalls, "Two of the postdocs started the genome annotation right away, the same day, with no hesitation."

The group had earlier completed an assembly of public gene databases, and immediately placed this information on the draft genome. "Once I saw that we could place all of this information on the genome, it was clear that we could do a full initial annotation," says Wright. "Given the scope and the computation required, our collaboration with the Ohio Supercomputer Center was critical. We have entered an era in which massive computation is necessary to investigate these global biological phenomena."

In the article to be posted on Friday, the researchers describe their functionally annotated human gene index that is placed directly on the genome. "The index is based on the integration of public transcript, protein, and mapping information, supplemented with computational prediction," says Yuan. "Our division has a goal of performing high-impact research, and this project is a perfect example of such efforts."

In addition, the team describes numerous global features across the chromosomes, including the distribution of genes and self-replicating repetitive DNA elements.

Rapid release of this article has been enabled by a service offered by Genome Biology to authors with important results who wish to communicate their findings quickly. By depositing findings as a preprint, the work is posted online by Genome Biology with the understanding that it has yet to be peer-reviewed. Upon completion of a successful peer-review, articles can be published either with Genome Biology or any other journal. Until final peer-reviewed publication, responsibility for the article's content remains with the authors. In agreement with principles laid down by the Human Genome Project, who provided the raw data for this project, publication of this article follows the HGP's own publication in Nature.

All research articles published by Genome Biology are always available free of charge. A pre-publication version of this article is available at: http://genomebiology.com/2001/2/3/preprint/0001

Contact:
Dr Bo Yuan
Genome Team, Ohio State University
Tel: +1 (614) 292-0656
yuan.33@osu.edu

Useful links: First analysis of human genome sequence
National Human Genome Research Institute, USA
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/genome_sequence.htm

J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer, Celera Genomics Remarks at The Human Genome Announcement, The White House
Monday, June 26, 2000
http://www.pecorporation.com/press/prccorp062700a.html

Nature HGP issue
http://www.nature.com/genomics/human/

Science human genome issue
http://www.sciencemag.org/genome2001/

Notes for editors:
1. This research project was carried out in collaboration with the Statistical Genetics Group led by Dr. Fred Wright at the OSU, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and LabBook Inc.
2. Genome Biology is a new forum for biologists working in the post-genomic era and regularly publishes research, reviews, commentary and analysis both online and in a monthly print journal. All of the research articles that published by Genome Biology are available free of charge through our website, are listed in MEDLINE and can be accessed in full through PubMed. http://GenomeBiology.com