Editorial: Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes
Amanda J. Chamberlain, Hans H. Cheng, Elisabetta Giuffra, Christa Kuehn, Christopher K. Tuggle, Huaijun Zhou
Abstract
All fields of biology have been greatly influenced by the generation of complete and well-annotated genome assemblies. This impact is most apparent with the findings and resulting applications from the Human Genome Project (HGP), which has transformed biomedical science. The original justification for having a genome assembly was to get a complete "parts list" with the primary goal being the identification and location of all genes. However, it soon became readily apparent that genomes were much more than just sequences that code for proteins; protein-coding regions account for 1.5% of the human genome and similar results were obtained in analyzing the genomes of domesticated and other farmed animal species. Thus, current efforts have been focused on finding relevant functional elements, such as non-coding elements that regulate when, where, and how much specific genes and/or particular isoforms are expressed.