Judith A. Blake

Judith A. Blake

Abstract

Comparative Genomics and the Conservation of Biodiversity

The availability of complete genomes has transformed our approach to comparative genome analysis and has provided insights and new approaches to the study of the common set of genes and proteins shared among all organisms. With the extensive availability of molecular sequence data, experimental biologists now combine sequence similarity characteristics with analysis of mutant phenotypes to explore the function and regulation of genes and proteins and their impact on phenotypes. Knowledge about proteins in one organism can often be transferred to other organisms, and often provides the catalyst for further discovery. I will provide examples of several types of comparative genome analyses and discuss the impact on the discovery, analysis, and conservation of biodiversity. I will also discuss the development of the Gene Ontology, a project to provide a dynamic, structured, shared vocabulary that can be applied to all organisms.

Biography

Judith Blake is an honors graduate of the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University, where her work focused on the molecular genetics of speciation. In 1989, she joined the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Laboratory of Molecular Systematics. She moved to The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR) in 1992 to work in the area of comparative genome analysis. In 1996, she joined the Mouse Genome Informatics group at The Jackson Laboratory, where she oversees the data acquisition process for the Mouse Genome Database, a community information resource representing the genetics and genomics of the laboratory mouse.

Relevant Publications

Hill, D.P., Davis, A.P., Richardson, J.A., Corradi, J., Ringwald, M., Eppig, J.T. and Blake, J.A. 2001. Strategies for biological annotation of mammalian systems: Implementing gene ontologies in mouse genome informatics. (In Press).

Blake, J.A., Eppig, J.T., Richardson, J.E., Bult, C.J., J.A. Kadin and the Mouse Genome Database Group. 2001. The Mouse Genome Database (MGD): Integration Nexus for the Laboratory Mouse. Nucleic Acids Research 29: 91 Ð 94.

The Gene Ontology Consortium. 2000. Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology. Nature Genetics 25: 25 - 29.

Bult C.J., Richardson J.E., Blake J.A., Kadin J.A., Ringwald M., Eppig J.T., and the Mouse Genome Informatics Staff. 2000. Mouse genome informatics in a new age of biological inquiry. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Bio-Informatics and Biomedical Engineering pp. 29-32.

<<Back to Presenters page