About the ENCODE Project
| This site contains information derived from the ENCODE project at NHGRI. Additional background information on the ENCODE project can be found on the NHGRI website. There is also an Ensembl version of the ENCODE resource page available. In April 2003, the sequence of the human genome was completed, but much remains to be done. To maximize the information contained in the sequence, the identity and precise location of all of the functional elements in the genome will have to be determined. These include promoters and other transcriptional regulatory sequences, and determinants of chromosome structure and function such as origins of replication. This project is assembling a comprehensive encyclopedia of all of these features in a selected 1% of the genome to better understand human biology, to predict potential disease risks, and to stimulate the development of new therapies to prevent and treat disease. The NHGRI has created a highly interactive public research consortium to carry out a pilot project for testing and comparing existing and new methods to identify functional sequences in DNA. The aim is to examine a diverse set of techniques, technologies and strategies to identify all the functional elements in defined regions of human genomic sequence, to identify gaps in our ability to annotate genomic sequence, and to consider the suitability of such methods to be scaled up for an effort to analyze the entire human genome. There are several roles for the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics group in this work. We manage the official repository of the sequence-related data for the consortium and support the coordination of data submission, storage, retrieval, and visualization. We also have a special interest in comparative genomics, and are providing additional resources for the ENCODE groups working in this area. We'd like to thank NHGRI for their support of this project, and to the various contributors of annotations and analyses. The team at UCSC that develops and maintains this ENCODE site is made up of Daryl Thomas, Kate Rosenbloom, Jim Kent, and the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics staff. |