Last July I introduced CAFA: Critical Assessment of (Gene and Protein) Function Annotations. Recap: the number of genomic and metagenomic sequences is growing at a horrendous rate. We are inundated with sequence data, yet the fraction of useful information we can glean from these sequences is steadily decreasing. There are simply too many sequences, and they are […]
The trouble with genomic sequencing, is that it is too cheap. Anyone that has a bit of extra cash laying around, you can scrape the bugs off your windshield, sequence them, and write a paper. Seriously? Yes, seriously now: as we sequence more and more genomes, our annotation tools cannot keep up with them. It’s […]
First, a short glossary. Homologous genes are descended from a common ancestral gene. There are two types of homology: Orthology is homology due to a speciation event. So if there is a gene A’ in humans and A” in mice, and they are obviously similar in sequence, we infer that they homologous. We usually also […]
