Could these repeated observations come simply from unexpectedly large representation of such genes in the genome? We have recently performed bioinformatic searches that attempt to enumerate the number of “cell adhesion molecules”. We constructed and performed these searches in ways that were independent of the genome wide association data described here. These searches used a combination of natural-language and keyword-based literature and database searches with DNA sequence motif searches using sequence elements common to cell adhesion molecule families (CYL, QRL and GRU, in preparation). Briefly, we (CYL) integrated Gene Ontology annotations, domain structure information and keyword queries of NCBI Entrez Gene annotations in ways that were independent of the hand-annotated lists of cell adhesion related genes identified by genome wide association. First, we extracted 196 genes that encoded 281 proteins using the gene ontology term “cell adhesion (GO:0007155)” [229]. Second, we extracted detailed domain features for six sub-families of cell adhesion molecules, including cadherins, IgCAMs, integrins, neurexins, catenins and neuroligins [230–236]. Using these features and Perl scripts, we identified 218 human genes that encoded 532 proteins based on standardized related
