Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program Round 2 – 2002

Arend Sidow, Pathology
Serafim Batzoglou, Computer Science

Sequencing of the human genome marked only the beginning of a new era in biomedicine. In the next several years, the genomes of many mammals, vertebrates, and invertebrates will be sequenced. While this may seem like icing on the cake, it is in fact comparative analyses with these other genomes that will fully extract the information hidden in the human genome.

The methodology we are developing will allow alignments of whole genomes, quantify the constraint on every functional region, and estimate the relative impact of any possible mutation.