The emerging discipline of genomics is revolutionizing the field of biology. Structural genomics focuses on unraveling details of the genetic material, primarily through large-scale DNA sequencing efforts. Functional genomics and proteomics define the next frontier. Their goals are to link genome sequence data with expression patterns and protein accumulation patterns to achieve a higher level understanding of genome function. Genomics, therefore, is a foundation discipline for the BCB training group and for systems-wide approaches to understanding biological problems.

Much of current genomics research relies on high-throughput technologies to generate large amounts of sequence and expression data. These data are typically made available to investigators around the world via the Internet. Several BCB faculty members are involved in genomics initiatives, often as part of national and international collaborations. These ISU-based genomics projects will give BCB fellows direct access to state-of-art developments in this emerging discipline. They enable campus-wide collaborations between those BCB faculty who are generating data and those who are primarily interested in developing tools for analysis and interpretation (e.g., the bioinformatics faculty). The ISU genomics initiatives also enable BCB fellows to design and shape genomics experiments for their own specific objectives, and at the same time, they link them to global efforts to understand biological systems.

BCB faculty interested in Functional and Structural Genomics Research.