Canadian company helps define next step in the Human Genome Initiative
SylvainH
July 6, 2000 - Ottawa - Today AMITA Corporation, a leader in database
development, officially released its white paper Database Mining in the
Human Genome Initiative. It provides a summary of research to date as well
as identifies future research trends in genomics.
The Human Genome Initiative is an international research program for the
creation of detailed genetic and physical maps of the human genome. As
recently announced, the first step of the project - sequencing the genome -
is almost complete. The next question now arises - what to do with the
enormous amount of data? As Sonny Lundahl managing partner of AMITA states
"The scientific community is close to reaching the end of phase one, but now
the work begins for the technology community - creating methods to analyze
this data."
There are approximately three billion chemical letters that make up the
human genome. Data mining involves organizing and analyzing data to achieve
the insight required for practical applications such as medical
advancements.
Data mining presents a great opportunity for Canada in the field of
bioinformatics. Dr. Tom Hudson, director of the Montreal Genome Centre and
assistant director of the Whitehead Institute/MIT Centre for Genome
Research, says "Canada has been fortunate to recruit several leaders in
bioinformatics in the past few years. Together with the strong talent pool
of computer scientists coming out of Canadian universities, we have the
essential components for bioinformatics - people."
In the tradition of open source software, the white paper is available on
the Internet at www.biodatabases.com/whitepaper.html. The concept is quite
simple - by placing software on the Internet for people to view and update,
it evolves. As Sonny Lundahl explains "Very often a white paper becomes
obsolete within weeks of being published. By posting it on the web, we are
encouraging updates and comments from the genetic community. We want this
document to become a living, breathing tool that we can use to shape the
field of database mining in genome research."
Biodatabases.com is a project of AMITA Corporation. AMITA is one of the
first and only dedicated database developers for the Human Genome
Initiative.
-30-
For further information:
Wanda Cadigan
AMITA
1420 Blair Place, Suite 500
Ottawa, ON, K1J 9L8
(613) 742-6482