The future of biology lies in the secrets of genes. Novozymes has been involved in the genome sequencing of a series of organisms since 1995 and has established a strong position in the field. Novozymes’ dedicated Bioinformatics department is involved in analyzing the huge amount of biological data currently being generated, for which purpose it uses a series of powerful new computational tools.
Genome sequences are one of the main sources of new information about enzyme genes. About 50 microbial genomes representing high taxonomic diversity are available today from public databases, and more than 100 more genomes are likely to be finished during the next year. Some of these organisms have their habitat around volcanic activities at the bottom of the oceans. Their genomic DNA sequences contain information about enzymes which are stable and active at high temperatures.
Novozymes makes use of this data and proprietary genomic data to isolate, express and evaluate genes that may be of potential industrial use. Perhaps the most important computational tools in this regard are algorithms for aligning new sequences to known nucleic acid or protein sequences with known functions in order to assign a function to the new sequences.
Computational analysis of genes and proteins can also be used to acquire new information about biological processes. Novozymes uses artificial neural networks to teach a computer what a DNA or protein sequence should look like to carry out a given function. We can then ask the computer to analyze many different new sequences and tell us which of the sequences have the function we are looking for. In this way we have trained networks which can predict intron/exon splice-sites in mRNA or cellular localization of a new protein based purely on its sequence.
Novozymes also uses another new technology in modern biology which produces large amounts of data: DNA microarrays. DNA microarra
ys are a relatively new technology that facilitate the simultaneous monitoring of differential gene expression of a large number of genes from a given organism under different growth conditions. In fact, the activity of all the genes of an entire organism can be monitored simultaneously. Novozymes has developed microarrays that cover several production host organisms. The data is efficiently analyzed by computer and compared to genetic, protein and metabolic databases to reveal new relationships between genes. We expect this research to result in improved production strains giving higher yields and greater productivity.