Computational method to assign microbial genes to pathways.

We present techniques that mine fully sequenced microbial genomes for functional relationships between genes. We show that genes related by one of four techniques are more likely to belong to the same cellular pathways. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the pathway of an uncharacterized gene may be inferred from those of its functionally related partners. Therefore, we are now able to assign most of the genes within bacteria to cellular pathways. Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.