Fruits of human genome project and private venture, and their impact on life science

Bacterial Small Regulatory RNAs and Hfq Protein

Small regulatory RNA (sRNA) is a unique noncoding RNA involved in regulation of gene expression in both eukaryotic and bacterial cells. This short review discusses examples of positive and negative translation regulation by sRNAs in bacteria and participation of Hfq in these processes. The importance of structure investigation of nucleotide-protein and RNA-protein complexes for designing a model of Hfq interaction with both mRNA and sRNA simultaneously is demonstrated.

Biomedical informatics and translational medicine

Biomedical informatics involves a core set of methodologies that can provide a foundation for crossing the "translational barriers" associated with translational medicine. To this end, the fundamental aspects of biomedical informatics (e.g., bioinformatics, imaging informatics, clinical informatics, and public health informatics) may be essential in helping improve the ability to bring basic research findings to the bedside, evaluate the efficacy of interventions across communities, and enable the assessment of the eventual impact of translational medicine innovations on health policies. Here, a brief description is provided for a selection of key biomedical informatics topics (Decision Support, Natural Language Processing, Standards, Information Retrieval, and Electronic Health Records) and their relevance to translational medicine. Based on contributions and advancements in each of these topic areas, the article proposes that biomedical informatics practitioners ("biomedical informaticians") can be essential members of translational medicine teams.