Algorithms for Molecular Biology Fall Semester, 2001

s and present the more promising directions in contemporary research. 11.1 Introduction 11.1.1 Functional Genomics Having (almost) reached the end of Human Genome Project, the question that needs to be asked is: "What's next?". The complete sequencing of the Human Genome is an immense task, which is now declared as being completed (and is actually nearing completion). While much work remains to be done even there, the existence of the full DNA sequence of an organism represents only the beginning of a long journey toward the understanding of living organisms. "functional genomics" is the study of the functionality of specific genes, their Based on a scribe by Ronny Morad and Tal Moran, Fall 2000. Aviv Univ. relations to diseases, their associated proteins and their participation in biological processes. Our current knowledge on gene function is extremely limited, with most of the genes completely uncharacterized and only very few with exact known function. Most of the knowledge