Communications of the ACM
Deeper Than Ancestry.com, 'evocor' Identifies Gene Relationships
The new EvoCor search engine identifies genes that are functionally linked.
Credit: National Institutes of Health
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) researchers have developed EvoCor, a search engine that identifies genes that are functionally linked.
The system is based on the idea that genes with a similar evolutionary history and expression pattern have evolved together to control a specific biological process.
The researchers say EvoCor could help medical scientists find ways to treat diseases that often have a genetic component.
EvoCor works by comparing the expression pattern of all genes to generate a list of candidate genes that function together, with a specific gene in question, to drive a cellular process.
"EvoCor should speed the discovery of complex molecular mechanisms that control key cellular processes, including those that function to regenerate axons," says Virginia Tech professor Gregorio Valdez. He says EvoCor utilizes the vast array of publicly available genome and gene expression datasets to generate a list of candidate genes. "We took advantage of nearly 200 organisms with fully sequenced genomes to map out and compare the evolutionary history of all human genes," Valdez says.
EvoCor improves the manageability of sifting through the 21,000 human genes already mapped, 182 different genomes, and large gene expression datasets maintained by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
From Virginia Tech News
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