Munro Lab

Into The Unknome

Dive into the depths of genome discovery.

The Unknome (unknown genome) is a paper and online database written and manufactured for 10 tireless years by Sean Munro and his diligent team. Here you will discover everything about the Unknome from past to present projects, contacts to links and much more.

Want to check out the Paper and Database for yourself?

If so these links will help you out! >

The Unknome Database: https://unknome.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/

The link to the paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002222

Unknome Wired Magazine Article : https://www.wired.co.uk/article/unknome-proteins-human-genome

What was the motivation to start?​

For many years genome research has been neglected or, at least, not given near to enough attention into a subset of proteins. So Sean Munro, and Matthew Freeman lead the way into delving into the depths of experimenting writing and editing.

10 Years of Research Conducted

Spent Writing, Fine Tuning, And Editing.

9 People

and their Hard Work And Effort.

What Is a Genome?

Well if you were to consult Google or Wikipedia you would find something along the lines of, “In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA.

However, when looking into the unknome we delve into the “Mystery genes that keep us alive”, these fascinating genes have been neglected in prior genome research. In the words of Sean Munro “A Genome is the complete set of genes that encodes the 20,000 different proteins that make up the human body, but for several thousands of these the functions have yet to come into our understanding, and these are the unknome.”

Upcoming Genome Projects

+ Upcoming Partnerships & A More In depth View Of The Unknome

The Unknome and DARPA

The US Government agency DARPA have launched an Advanced Research Concept called “Discovering Unknome Function” which invites applicants to submit ideas for high-throughput prediction of gene function.  More information can be found here:  https://www.darpa.mil/ARC/DUF


How Can AI Influence Genome Research?

This is exactly the question the Unknome team asked. Therefore, Tim Stevens and Sean Munro are now in the midst of using machine learning/AI to try and predict the functions of some of the genes in the Unnkome. They are using powerful Neural Networks, to learn about the properties that 2 proteins can share if acting in the same process. This in turn allows them to use said networks to identify the unknown proteins (the Unknome) that either act, or are part of complexes, with other known proteins.

The Faces Behind The Unknome

Although Sean Munro and Mathew Freeman weren’t the only people behind the Unknome, they were the Main two.

Sean Munro

Co-Leader

Sean has been a group leader at the LMB since 1989, and the in his lab has addressed protein retention in the Golgi, cannabinoid receptors, protein glycosylation, doubting lipid rafts, Rab and Arf GTPases, and vesicle tethering.

    Matthew Freeman

    Co-Leader

    Matthew is currently Head of the Sir William Dunn School Pathology at Oxford University. He has made important discoveries in the field of intramembrane proteases for many years, in Drosophila and mammals.

      Tim Stevens

      Computational Biologist

      Tim has many years of experience of applying computational methods to revealing genome structure, developing NMR methods, and studying proteomes and genomes. When not at the LMB he Heads Machine Learning at Sortera Bio.

        3 of the Masterminds behind the data base, paper and discovery of the Unknome. Meet Sean Munro FRS. Link to wikipedia > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Munro. Sean originated the idea and helped all along the way with the data base experiments etc etc, until the completion of the Unknome project. Mathew Freeman helped tremendously in the experiments on fruit flies and experimentation in general.