Identification of Disease Genes: Example-Driven Web-Based Tutorial

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has developed several web-based mini-courses (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/minicourses ) illustrating the applications of NCBI resources. This chapter describes the problem-based minicourse called “Identification of Disease Genes.” The mini-course guides us through one of the several ways to identify disease related genes, starting from the expressed sequence data such as that may have been obtained from patients. The chapter first provides an introduction to the human genome assembly and the resources such as the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, Map Viewer, Single Nucleotide Polymorphism database, and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man. The chapter then demonstrates the practical application of these resources to the identification of genes related to two diseases, hemochromatosis and sickle cell anemia. The chapter also provides links to the mini-course web pages and includes the screen images of the results of the applied steps.