Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Dr. Elik enlisted Georgetown undergraduates to assist her in her genome annotation work. (Photo: Roland Dimaya)

By Megan Weintraub

Genome annotation—the process of identifying the location and function of genes within long strings of DNA—is an exciting and relatively new endeavor in the field of biology. The Human Genome Project, which relies on genome annotation, has received significant coverage in the press and has fueled biologists’ interest in decoding the genomes of other species as well.

Large-scale decoding efforts, such as the Bovine Genome Database Project, which is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture and is part of the Bovine Genome Sequencing Consortium, allow qualified biologists to review the results of genome annotation. Approximately 200 international scientists participate in the consortium and contribute to the database administered by Dr. Chris Elsik, an assistant professor of bioinformatics at Georgetown.

Dr. Elsik is involved in both the automated and manual parts of the genome annotation process. First, she writes computer programs that use algorithms to sift through genomic data. For the manual part of the process, Dr. Elsik invited several Georgetown undergraduate students to join the international effort to read through the output from the gene prediction programs.

“Computational approaches are huge time-savers, but in the end, it’s still important to have human eyes look over the results. I’ve been really impressed with the students’ work so far,” she says.

For the manual annotation project, five undergraduate students—Catherine Jamis, Kaitlin Donohue, Suria Bahadue, Justin Lee, and Sari Khalil—trained with Dr. Darren Hagen and Dr. Chris Childers, two Georgetown post-doctoral fellows who had previous experience with this type of work. After enough practice, the students started working autonomously on the review process and submitting their gene model results to the consortium. Their goal is to submit at least 30 gene models each this semester. Dr. Elsik sees their work as a significant contribution to the field.

“The manual annotation project offers undergraduate students an amazing opportunity to work with scientists from around the world and to apply some of the concepts they’re learning in the lab,” explains Dr. Elsik.

“As Biology majors, we hear about this legendary ‘scientific community,’ but the bovine genome is the community in its living form,” adds Bahadue.

Eventually, Dr. Elsik and the students will submit their findings to various journals and the students will become co-authors on this important and groundbreaking research.

“I have learned a lot and feel very fortunate for this opportunity that Dr. Elsik has generously provided. I have annotated about fifteen genes so far, and hope to contribute significantly more in the upcoming months,” says Lee.

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