Cracking the Code within Us: Bioinformatics of the Human Genome

Improving our understanding of genome structure and function is central to biology and medicine. Figure 1: Cumulative number of genomes sequenced since the first DNA-based genome was sequenced in 1977 (data from ftp.cbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/GENOME_REPORTS). My research group uses computational models to study the functional potential of each of the three billion pairs of chemical bases in the human genome. Ultimately, we are paving the way to designing personalized interventions against disease, which technological advancements are finally pushing toward reality. The rise of bioinformatics. According to the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information, bioinformatics "is the field of science in which biology, computer science, and information technology merge into a single discipline". The origins of bioinformatics can be traced back to the work of Margaret Oakley Dayhoff (1925-1983), a professor at Georgetown University Medical Center who devoted most of her career to the creation and manipulation of biological sequence databases.