A Biological Atlas of Functional Maps Review

elling across a country for the first time, a single roadThe availability of complete genome sequences for humap is usually sufficient to find the way. However for man and other organisms is expected to change the more sophisticated expeditions, additional maps are way we formulate and address biological questions. needed. Wine connoisseurs searching for new vintages With nearly all genes in hand, the conventional reducmight use, in addition to roadmaps, other maps that tionist approach of studying one gene at a time can describe the soil, the climate, the topography, and other now be complemented by more global or integrative factors that might influence the taste. Integrated into a approaches that consider all genes at once. Because “wine atlas” these maps will help find those few “terintricate networks of interactions between proteins (and roirs” which are worth a tasting journey. In the postRNA molecules) are likely to regulate biological progenome era, molecular biologists will have, and most cesses, rather than single proteins acting by themlikely take, the opportunity to navigate through larger selves, such global approaches should improve our unparts of uncharacterized territories of the proteome. derstanding of many molecular mechanisms, including Thus in the continuation of genome mapping, novel those involved in human diseases. functional mapping projects have recently emerged for