The Role of Librarians in the Genomic Medicine Era
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to inform librarians about the use of bioinformation stored in databases. Sequencing of the human genome is already finished. The target date for making the complete, high-accuracy sequence available was April 2003, during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix of DNA. The world of biology has been transformed by technical tools of a field known as genomics. These new methods have allowed scientists to generate extraordinarily useful information and they have become dependent on computer science to store, organize, search, manipulate and retrieve the new information. The new discipline of bioinformatics has created many new molecular biology databanks to store the results of the Human Genome Project.
The potential usefulness from this rich databank of current information containing sequence data from humans and model organisms, along with recent technological innovation fostered by the Human Genome Project, will lead to important advances in the understanding of diseases and disorders having a genetic basis and how health care is delivered from this point forwards.
The sequence-based and functional annotations are stored in Databases that hold more than 32,549,400 sequence records as of February 2004. To facilitate the use of databases by the research community, there are two major genome websites: The European Molecular Laboratory (Europe) and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (United States of America).
These portals provide free accessibility to all this basic information, without restrictions, subscription fees or other passwords. The specialized libraries in health sciences have had from their origins, and must continue having, a leading role in the transmission of knowledge amongst the scientific community. Health and Medical librarians can play a key role in making possible the translation of genomic research information into clinical environments. It would be useful for librarians who work in health science libraries to know how to search key genetic information resources and to have a basic understanding about the type of information contained in each one.
KEYWORDS. Human Genome, Health and Medical librarians, Molecular Biology Database, Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformation, Bioinformatician, Bioinformatics, EMBL, NCBI, SRS, Entrez.
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