Highlighting 'gene promoters' with clinical laboratory IT solutions

"Gene promoters" - sections of DNA that indicate the start of a protein sequence - may be found more easily with clinical laboratory IT solutions thanks to the efforts of The Wistar Institute.

Researchers at the facility have created a new tool accessible online which they say can sift through data generated within clinical laboratory IT solutions and help to pick up on any gene promoters present in the dataset.

While DNA contains no more than around 20,000 genes capable of encoding proteins, each has the potential to begin the code of multiple sequences.

As a result, the human body has the ability to create five times that number of proteins, about 100,000 in all.

With the tool - named the Mammalian Promoter Database - personalised therapeutics and diagnostic processes may be designed, the Wistar team says.

The Wistar Institute was founded in 1892 and takes its name from Caspar Wistar, a physician who began his practice in 1787 in Philadelphia.