Archive Site Provided for Historical Purposes
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Human Genome Program
In this issue...
DOE '99 Oakland Highlights
Genome Project
In the News
Microbial Genomics
Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues
Informatics
Web, Other Resources, Publications
Funding
Meeting Calendars & Acronyms
The EcoCyc project was conceived in 1990 by Peter Karp (then at SRI International) and Monica Riley (Marine Biological Laboratory) to provide a central, integrative resource for the quickly changing knowledge about E.coli's genes and metabolism. Karp's group developed Pathway Tools, a software environment that included but went beyond genome sequence data by integrating richly curated information on gene function and pathways. Riley's group searched the biomedical literature for material on E.coli enzymes and pathways. An early task was to determine what to gather about each enzyme and pathway and to design a database schema that would accommodate that information. Riley published a system for categorizing E.coli genes according to their function; this and other similar systems have since been used by genome project researchers to classify their annotated genes. Kenneth Rudd (National Center for Biotechnology Information) contributed his collection of all known E.coli DNA sequences and assembled them into an ordered set of maximal sequences that were pinned to the Kohara physical restriction map of the E.coli chromosome. After Fred Blattner's group at the University of Wisconsin completed E.coli's DNA sequence, the data were integrated into EcoCyc.
The electronic form of the newsletter may be cited in the following style:
Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Human Genome News (v10n3-4).
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international 13-year effort, 1990 to 2003. Primary goals were to discover the complete set of human genes and make them accessible for further biological study, and determine the complete sequence of DNA bases in the human genome. See Timeline for more HGP history.
Published from 1989 until 2002, this newsletter facilitated HGP communication, helped prevent duplication of research effort, and informed persons interested in genome research.