Exploiting information in the biomolecular domain: reaching out to medicine

High throughput methods have transformed the biomolecular sciences. The completion of the human genome was a symbolic and substantial scientific achievement. Methods of studying gene expression, molecular interactions and complex structures are all scaling up to enable exhaustive studies creating vast amounts of data. This information is crucial to all scientific endeavour which studies living systems - from yeast to mankind. Nowhere is the potential benefit greater than in medicine and health. Understanding the molecular processes of disease and aging is crucial to human well-being. However, exploiting the diversity of data even in molecular biology challenges our information engineering skills. Rendering disparate information sources developed with different motivations interoperable is far from trivial. The difficulties are even greater when bridging the disciplines of basic biology and medicine. We present methods used to integrate a wide range of biomolecular information which address both technical and ontological aspects of the problem, and a European study of existing research in biology/medicine interface