How are massive plant genomics data organized and interpreted?
Consider that just one tomato plant contains about 35,000 genes that express thousands of different proteins. Then consider how many different plants are currently under study, and its easy to understand the enormity of the data generated in all of biological research. Organizing that data and making it accessible for further research is an area called bioinformatics. The interface between biology, statistics and computer science, bioinformatics develops computational tools and resources that organize massive amounts of data into usable sets so that the knowledge contained in them can be retrieved, analyzed and applied in biological research. Zhangjun Feis laboratory at BTI develops both the databases and the interfaces needed to help scientists understand how genes work together and how they form functioning cells and organisms. He also has developed analytical and data-mining tools that allow scientists to efficiently extract biological information from the database for use in their
