Using GO to enhance the utility of Drosophila data to medical research

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Ten years ago the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster became one of the first complex animals to have its genome sequenced. This may seem an odd choice - who cares about flies and why didn?t we start with the human genome? In fact, the fruit fly has been a favourite species for genetic research for a century. Not only is it easy to work with and free from many of the ethical concerns associated with using animals in medical research but there are enough similarities between flies and man to make it directly relevant to medical research. Around 75% of the genes known to be associated with human diseases are also found in the fly and in many cases there is evidence that they work in similar ways in both species. Figuring out how something works in a fly can give scientists clues as to how to fix things when the same genes go wrong in human disease. The fly is proving to be a good model for various human diseases such as brain disorders. As a result of its popularity, scientists publish thousands of research papers on fly genes every year. For scientists working on a specific human disease, it can be a daunting task to find all of published information that may be relevant to their work and make sense of experiments preformed in different species. The aim of this project is to summarise fly research data in a way that makes it easier for all biological researchers to find and make use of it. The work will involve database curators reading peer reviewed research papers and summarising any data about gene function. To do this we will make use of a special dictionary of interconnected scientific terms, the Gene Ontology, that has been developed to succinctly describe what the products of genes do and where in a cell they carry out these functions. The connections between terms makes it easy to search and display biological processes that are related in different species. We will also label genes in the fly database to indicate that they are related to human genes and/or human diseases - this will make it easier for scientists to find the information they need to inform future research. The work will be carried out by scientists at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the Drosophila database FlyBase and the Gene Ontology Consortium.