UNC Scientists Open Source Their Genomic Research

ectoman writes: The human genome specifies more than 500 "kinases," enzymes that spur protein synthesis. Four hundred of them are still mysteries to us, even though knowledge about them could spark serious medical innovations. But scientists at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have initiated an open source effort to map them all—research they think could pioneer a new generation of drug discovery. As members of the Structural Genomics Consortium, the chemical biologists are spearheading a worldwide community project. "We need a community to build a map of what kinases do in biology," one said. "It has to be a community-generated map to get the richness and detail we need to be able to move some of these kinases into drug facilities. But we're just doing the source code. Until someone puts the source code out there and makes it available to everybody, people won't have anything to modify."

Comments

Spur protein synthesis?

[Alopex]

Kinases do much more than just spur protein synthesis. They are among the primary signaling enzymes in the body, involved in turning on and off a multitude of cellular processes by attaching phosphate groups to various targets. Some enzymes simply don't function without being triggered by a kinase. The summary just irks me when it's misleading or wrong