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Title: GRAIL seeks out genes buried in DNA sequence

Journal Article · · Science (Washington, D.C.); (United States)

When the Human Genome Project achieves its ultimate goal, supposedly around 2005, biologists will have in hand the exact sequence of all 3 billion nucleotides arrayed along the human chromosomes. But they have never been entirely sure how they will read the language of the long string of As, Gs, Ts, and Cs. How will they even be able to pick out the genes, which account for a mere 5% of the genome, from the mass of letters in between Now Edward Ubergacher, a biophysicist-turned-computational-biologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has come one step toward providing an answer: a new artificial intelligence program, called GRAIL, that can pick out the coding regions of genes in a long stretch of sequence data. So far, the Oak Ridge team has analyzed 5 million bases of DNA. One year ago, even 6 months ago, it was virtually impossible to go into human genomic sequence and find genes by computer with any reliability. Now we can go in and find 90% of the genes very quickly. GRAIL can be used on a PC, not a supercomputer, and it provides an answer almost instantly.

OSTI ID:
5821052
Journal Information:
Science (Washington, D.C.); (United States), Vol. 254:5033; ISSN 0036-8075
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English