Colloquium: An Experimental Approach to Genome Annotation to be held July 19-20, 2004 in Washington, DC

美国微生物学会将于7月19日至20日在华盛顿召开一个由大约30名专家科学家组成的学术讨论会，讨论在注释目前已知的许多完整微生物基因组序列时面临的问题，并编写一份全面、分析和实用的报告，供科学界、联邦机构、企业部门和普通公众使用。研讨会将汇集生物信息学家和实验生物学家，讨论如何建立两组之间的协同作用，可能导致协调努力，以确定未知功能基因的功能，并平行努力确定与已知酶活性相对应的基因，目前尚未与可识别的基因产物或基因相关联。这两种观点（描述基因寻找功能和功能寻找基因）在观点上是互补的，它们的共同目标是改进精确基因组注释所依赖的知识库。尽管现代生物信息学的工具可以对假设的开放阅读框编码的蛋白质的潜在功能做出可信的预测，但只有通过随后的实验验证，这种注释才能被认为是可靠的。该研讨会将为生物信息学家和实验学家之间的讨论提供机会，以突出对测试生物信息学预测的实验学家最有用的信息类型。讨论还将考虑优先考虑适合实验分析的开放阅读框架的标准。一位专业的科学作家将与指导委员会密切合作，编写一份报告草案，供研讨会参与者审查。它将根据讨论会的介绍提供一份背景简报，并为该领域进一步的科学努力提出一套建议。该报告将以印刷和电子格式编写。

The American Society for Microbiology will convene a group of approximately 30 expert scientists for a colloquium July 19-20 in Washington DC, to discuss the problems faced in annotating the many complete microbial genome sequences that are now known and to develop a comprehensive, analytical, and practical report that may be used by the scientific community, federal agencies, the corporate sector, and the lay public. The colloquium will bring together bioinformaticians and experimental biologists to discuss how a synergy between the two groups might be established, potentially leading to coordinated efforts to identify the functions of genes of unknown function and a parallel effort to identify the genes that correspond to known enzyme activities, not so far linked to identifiable gene products or genes. These two ideas (characterizing genes in search of a function and functions in search of their genes) are complementary in perspective, with a common goal of improving the knowledge base upon which accurate genome annotation relies. Although the tools of modern bioinformatics can make credible predictions about potential functions for the proteins encoded by hypothetical open reading frames, only by subsequent experimental verification can that annotation be considered reliable. The colloquium will provide an opportunity for discussion between bioinformaticists and experimentalists to highlight the kind of information that is most useful to experimentalists who would test bioinformatic predictions. The discussion will also consider the criteria for prioritizing open reading frames suitable for experimental analysis. A professional science writer, working closely with the steering committee, will develop a draft report for review by the colloquium participants. It will provide a background briefing based on the colloquium presentations and a set of recommendations for further scientific endeavors in the field. The report will be developed in print and electronic formats.