
The Function Special Interest Group:

Recently, the availability of genomic-level sequence information for thousands of species, coupled with massive high-throughput experimental data, has created new opportunities as well as challenges for function prediction.
Many methodologies have been developed by research groups worldwide, many based in comparing unsolved sequences with databases of proteins whose functions are known.
Other methods aim at mining the scientific literature associated with some of these proteins, yet others combine sophisticated machine-learning algorithms with an understanding of biological processes to decipher what these proteins do. Indeed, we may have already identified a protein that is an ideal drug target for cancer, but it is lost in the myriad of data labeled as “function unknown”.