Bioinformatics push

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have launched the second phase of the bioinformatics initiative. Key priorities for the three-year, Pounds 4.5 million initiative include developing a system to help predict the function of a protein molecule from a given DNA sequence; new approaches to comparative genome analysis; and understanding how IT can meet the challenge posed by the complexity of biological data and databases that take account of the uncomputerised or unstructured nature of much biological information.