The role of signal-processing concepts in genomics and proteomics

With the enormous amount of genomic and proteomic data that is available to us in the public domain, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to process this information in ways that are useful to humankind. Signal processing methods have played an important role in this context, some of which are reviewed in this paper. First we review the role of digital filtering techniques in gene identification. We then discuss the topic of long-range correlation between base pairs in DNA sequences. This correlation corresponds to a 1/f type of power spectrum. We also describe some of the recent applications of Fourier methods in the study of proteins. Finally we mention the role of Karhunen-Loeve like transforms in the interpretation of DNA microarray data for gene expression.