Gene Whisperer

The CINTEL FSP, in partnership with CSIRO’s Agriculture and Food Research has successfully produced “GeneWhisperer“, a prototype development implementing the key features required for human-AI collaboration in (functional) genome annotation.

Genome annotation is critical for unravelling functional elements within genomes. Manual curation is a common practice for identifying the function of genes, particularly those missed by automated annotation pipelines. However, this process is time-consuming and laborious. To address this challenge, software tools have become indispensable in supporting human experts during the annotation process. Yet current systems often lack the seamless integration of artificial and human intelligence, limiting their ability to efficiently utilise the vast genomic data available from diverse sources. CSIRO’s CINTEL FSP has built Gene Whisperer, an innovative system that integrates domain-specific tools and human-AI collaboration through a language-based interface to enhance the precision and efficiency of gene function curation. Gene Whisperer assists curators in identifying and extracting pertinent information from comprehensive databases, scientific literature, knowledge graphs and web pages. Gene Whisperer also extracts biological concepts from scientific literature, enabling researchers to analyse large volumes of literature efficiently. By synergising the capabilities of AI with human curator expertise, Gene Whisperer offers a promising approach to advancing our understanding of gene functions and streamlining the gene annotation process.

For more information please contact Maisie.Zhang@csiro.au or Radoslaw.Suchecki@csiro.au.