Community intelligence applied to gene annotation
This session is moderated by Andrew Su and John Hogenesch:
Despite identification of the ~25,000 genes which comprise the “parts list” of the human genome, researchers continue to largely study previously-studied genes, leaving half of the genes in the human genome virtually unannotated. Moreover, there is growing recognition that under-resourced curators at official annotation centers will be overwhelmed with the pace of scientific discovery. This session will explore the application of community intelligence principles (“crowdsourcing”) to the goal of genome-wide gene annotation. As a starting point for the discussion, we will overview several recent efforts in this area, including the Gene Wiki, WikiProteins, WikiPathways, and WikiGenes. We will also overview BioGPS, an extensible and customizable gene portal that allows the entire scientific community to collaboratively build a gene annotation portal. Issues to be discussed include data reliability, credit and incentives, and community-building.
Links:
Gene Wiki (website – paper)
WikiProteins (website – paper)
WikiPathways (website – paper)
WikiGenes (website – paper)
BioGPS (website)
Discuss:
