Genome BiologyandBMC
Bioinformaticshave published the first articles in anew
cross-journal article seriesreporting results fromFANTOM4,
the latest research project from the FANTOM consortium.

FANTOM(Functional Annotation of
Mouse) is an international collaborative research project initiated and organized
by the RIKEN Omics Science Center in Yokohama, Japan. Previous work from the
FANTOM consortium has focused on identifying the transcribed components of mammalian
cells. FANTOM4 builds on this work, using novel methods to define how these
cellular components are regulated and work together as a biological network
in the acute myeloid leukemia cell line THP-1.

Among
the first FANTOM4 papers to be published inGenome
Biologyis a description of a suite ofcomputer
programsfrom Josee Dostie and colleagues which allow chromatin conformation
signatures to be identified. In the same journal, Alistair Forrest
and colleagues describeEdgeExpressDB,
a new database and associated tools for interpreting biological networks
and comparing large high-throughput expression datasets.Further
workpublished inBMC
Bioinformaticsby John Quackenbush and colleagues outlinestwo
new data-driven normalization strategies forhigh-throughput
real-timequantitative
PCR data.Additional research articles in this
article series will be published over coming months.

The FANTOM4 papers, including three additional companion articles just published
inNature Genetics, are put in context
by Phil Kapranov’sminireview,
which is also published in the latest issue ofGenome Biology.