The Google search engine has revolutionized knowledge dissemination over the Internet. With more than 3,000 queries per second, each sifting through hundreds of gigabytes of data, Google has blasted a new path to learning. In the emerging "-omics" era, biomedical research needs a similar but more intelligent integration of knowledge. Can the impressive scale and functionality of the Google approach be harnessed to navigate molecular profiles of cancer?
Scientists can already explore a substantial component of the expressed genome and proteome, but information is accumulating to the point of information overload, like drinking water from a fire hose. What's more, the information is heterogeneous on several levels – in terms of how it is generated, represented, and stored. In this context, bioinformatics – the convergence of biology, information science, and computation – will play a critical role in the future of cancer biology and pathology-based research.
The growing importance of ...
