Functional genomics

Genes do not operate alone within the cell, but in an intricate network of interactions that we have only recently started to envisage. Now, it is a widely accepted fact that coexpressing genes tend to be playing common roles in the cell.

Many higher-order levels of interaction are continuously being discovered and even complex traits, including diseases, are starting to be considered from a systems biology perspective. In this scenario, a clear necessity exists for methods and tools which can help to understand large-scale experiments (microarrays, proteomics, etc.) and to formulate genome-scale hypothesis (evolution, gene interaction, etc.) from a systems biology perspective. Dealing with genome-scale data in this context requires of its functional profiling, but this step must be taken within a systems biology framework, in which the collective properties of groups of genes are considered.