Idaho State University biology professor, Dr. Michael Thomas works on international genome project

Idaho State University’s Dr. Michael Thomas, assistant professor of biological sciences, is a member of a consortium of leading international scientists whose research will provide descriptive information for all the genes in the human genome.

According to a press release, the consortium just published its initial findings, "Integrative Annotation of 21,037 Human Genes."

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"It is being heralded by the international press as a scientific achievement to rival the human genome sequencing," Thomas said. "For the immediate effect on human disease research, it could well be more important."

ISU is one of just a dozen U.S. institutions involved in the project known as the Human Genome Annotation Jamboree, which includes 152 scientists at 40 institutions in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Thomas, one of only 15 Americans in the project, is listed 25th and among the conference’s organizers and primary authors in the published findings.

"For ISU, this is an important indication that we are continuing our move toward conducting research of international stature," Thomas said. "Projects such as this lay the groundwork for federal funding, enhanced faculty recruitment, and increased institutional stature, and provide unique and exciting international research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students."

Two jamborees have been held in Tokyo, and a third is in the offing. The first, Aug. 28-Sept. 8, 2002, "annotated 41,000-plus sequences associated with 21,000-plus actual functional human genes," Thomas said. "

Thomas said the sequences are technically clones, or copies, of human gene transcripts. The analyses compared each transcript to a number of existing genome data sets and assigned functions based on identity to

known human genes, similarity to known non-human genes, and similarity to known conserved coding domains (bits of genes found in many organisms

and typically involved in the same processes). Each transcript was annotated with data about the tissues and conditions from which it was derived.

"The implications for human health are profound," Thomas said. "Since we know the disease state from which many of these transcripts were derived, we can detect the specific mutations involved with those diseases. The outcome will be an increased understanding of the role genes play in human disease and will lead to new avenues from which we can search for novel treatments and cures."

He said jamborees have thus far only touched on health implications, but they will be the focus of future events.

Thomas joined the ISU faculty in July 2003 as a member of the BRIN (Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network) program founded by the National Institutes of Health to bring bioinformatics expertise to ISU. He previously was a research scientist in the Bioinformatics Research Center at Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wis., one of the lead institutions in rat genomics research.

"The Rat Genome Project is about identifying human diseases that are also found in rats," he said. "Four or five of us from the medical college were invited to the jamboree because of our familiarity with rat

genomics."