Briefs

RxPG News, Apr 6, 2005.

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In a new study, Peer Bork and a team of bioinformatics-savvy molecular biologists tested a new approach to extracting biologically meaningful information from the massive MEDLINE database. The US National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE contains over 12 million abstracts from thousands of publications dating back to 1965. Combining automated literature mining with comparative genomics -- which compares genome sequences of different organisms to discern differences and similarities in gene content -- the authors conducted a systematic search for associations between genes and phenotypic traits. Their approach automates tasks that typically require human curation.

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Among these unexpected match-ups, Bork and colleagues linked a number of food and food-poisoning-related terms with metabolic-enzyme-coding genes. All 37 genes predicated to play a role in food spoilage and toxicity are present in food-borne pathogens but not in most other prokaryotes.

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References

1. (2005) A Novel Data-Mining Approach Systematically Links Genes to Traits. PLoS Biol 3(5): e166.