Briefs

By Kristen Philipkoski -- Feb. 02, 2005

Scientists can read the activity of any given gene thanks to technologies called microarrays. They reveal whether a gene is turned on or off, and whether that gene is naughty or nice. But the mountains of information microarrays create often languish in obscure databases.

Now, software engineers are finally getting together with biologists to translate the pile of letters and numbers into scientific discoveries.

For example, scientists at the Salk Institute and an international consortium of researchers wanted to be able to predict the post-injury genetic changes associated with various types of spinal cord damage. Other scientists, they figured, would then be able to investigate drugs or other methods to ameliorate the permanent damage suffered by the 247,000 spinal cord injury victims in the United States. So the scientists inflicted various spinal injuries on rats, then recorded the reactions of the rodents' genes at various points in time afterward.

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