Bioinformatics and the malaria genome: facilitating access and exploitation of sequence information

The torrent of sequence information unleashed by the various genome sequencing projects, including that of Plasmodium falciparum, will lead to an unprecedented increase in the data available for research purposes. The scientific community is struggling to develop ways to assimilate this information and ensure that it is fully analysed in a way that enables rapid development of new therapeutic and diagnostic advances. This is particularly so for the field of tropical medicine where many of the scientists have had limited training in the area of Bioinformatics and may be further hampered by poor access to the sequence data. A number of collections of malaria genome sequence are available, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, however further improvements in these information resources are needed. In particular, there would be great benefit in integrating genomic sequence and functional genomics results with the large amount of pre-existing knowledge related to parasite biology and immunological interactions with the host. Attempts to achieve this include the PlasmoDB database, and the lessons learned in this effort could be of great utility to other organism-specific databases.