A Case-Based Approach to Gene Finding

Advances in molecular biology and the tools and techniques available for analysing molecular structure are providing a rapidly increasing deluge of information that maps fundamental genetic structures in humans and other organisms. Intelligent support is essential for managing and interpreting this overwhelming amount of data, and one of the most important tasks faced currently is the analysis of sequences of nucleotides in order to locate the areas of DNA that actually encode functional biological information. Such analysis has a substantial impact on the health sciences as the foundation of identifying genetic structures that are related to disease and that can serve as the basis for pharmacological or gene-therapeutic response. This paper describes our initial research in developing a CBR approach to the problem of finding regions in mammalian DNA that code proteins essential for life.