Volume: 2, Issue: 2

Commmentary

Question of the Animal-Plant-Fungal Divergence

There has been a controversial issue in phylogenetic relationships among animals ,fungi,and plants.
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Page 69

Review Article

Emerging Genomic and Proteomic Evidence on Relationships Among the Animal, Plant and Fungal Kingdoms

Sequence-based molecular phylogenies have provided new models of early eukaryotic evolution. This includes the widely accepted hypothesis that animals are related most closely to fungi, and that the two should be grouped together as the Opisthokonta. Although most published phylogenies have supported an opisthokont relationship, a number of genes contain a tree-building signal that clusters animal and green plant sequences, to the exclusion of fungi. The alternative tree-building signal is especially intriguing in light of emerging data from genomic and proteomic studies that indicate striking and potentially synapomorphic similarities between plants and animals. This paper reviews these new lines of evidence, which have yet to be incorporated into models of broad scale eukaryotic evolution.
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Page 70-76

Review Article

Microarray and Proteomic Analysis of Brassinosteroid- and Gibberellin-Regulated Gene and Protein Expression in Rice

Brassinosteroid (BR) and gibberellin (GA) are two groups of plant growth regulators essential for normal plant growth and development. To gain insight into the molecular mechanism by which BR and GA regulate the growth and development of plants, especially the monocot plant rice, it is necessary to identify and analyze more genes and proteins that are regulated by them. With the availability of draft sequences of two major types, japonica and indica rice, it has become possible to analyze expression changes of genes and proteins at genome scale. In this review, we summarize rice functional genomic research by using microarray and proteomic approaches and our recent research results focusing on the comparison of cDNA microarray and proteomic analyses of BR- and GA-regulated gene and protein expression in rice. We believe our findings have important implications for understanding the mechanism by which BR and GA regulate the growth and development of rice.
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Page 77-83

Review Article

Recent Applications of Hidden Markov Models in Computational Biology

This paper examines recent developments and applications of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to various problems in computational biology, including multiple sequence alignment, homology detection, protein sequences classification, and genomic annotation.
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Page 84-96

Research Article

Post-transcriptional Gene Silencing Induced by Short Interfering RNAs in Cultured Transgenic Plant Cells

Short interfering RNA (siRNA) is widely used for studying post-transcriptional gene silencing and holds great promise as a tool for both identifying function of novel genes and validating drug targets. Two siRNA fragments (siRNA-a and -b),which were designed against different specific areas of coding region of the same target green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene, were used to silence GFP expression in cultured gfp transgenic cells of rice (Oryza sativa L.; OS), cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.; GH), Fraser fir [Abies fraseri (Pursh) Poir; AF], and Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana Mill.; PV). Differential gene silencing was observed in the bombarded transgenic cells between two siRNAs, and these results were consistent with the inactivation of GFP confirmed by laser scanning microscopy, Northern blot,and siRNA analysis in tested transgenic cell cultures. These data suggest that siRNA-mediated gene inactivation can be the siRNA specific in different plant species. These results indicate that siRNA is a highly specific tool for targeted gene knockdown and for establishing siRNA-mediated gene silencing, which could be a reliable approach for large-scale screening of gene function and drug target validation.
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Page 97-108

Letter

Identification and Characterization of 177 Unreported Genes Associated with Liver Regeneration

The mammalian liver has a very strong regeneration capacity after partial hepatectomy (PH). To further learn the genes participating in the liver regeneration (LR), 551 cDNAs selected from subtracted cDNA libraries of the regenerating rat liver were screened by microarray, and their expression profiles were studied by cluster and generalization analyses. Among them, 177 genes were identified unreported and up- or down-regulated more than twofold at one or more time points after PH, of which 62 genes were down-regulated to less than 0.5; 99 genes were up-regulated to 2-10 folds, and 16 genes were either up- or down-regulated at different time points during LR. By using BLAST and GENSCAN, these genes were located on responsible chromosomes with 131 genes on the long arms of the chromosomes. The cluster and generalization analyses showed that the gene expression profiles are similar in 2 and 4, 12 and 16, 96 and 144 h respectively after PH,suggesting that the actions of the genes expressed in the same profiles are similar,and those expressed in different profiles have less similarity. However, the types,characteristics and functions of the 177 genes remain to be further studied.
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Page 109-118

Brief Report

Construction of A Non-Redundant Human SH2 Domain Database

Domain database is essential for domain property research. Eliminating redundant information in database query is very important for database quality. Here we report the manual construction of a non-redundant human SH2 domain database.There are 119 human SH2 domains in 110 SH2-containing proteins. Human SH2s were aligned with ClustalX, and a homologous tree was generated. In this tree,proteins with similar known function were classified into the same group. Some proteins in the same group have been reported to have similar binding motifs experimentally. The tree might provide clues about possible functions of hypothetical proteins for further experimental verification.
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Page 119-122

Research Resource

The Path to Enlightenment: Making Sense of Genomic and Proteomic Information

Whereas genomics describes the study of genome, mainly represented by its gene expression on the DNA or RNA level, the term proteomics denotes the study of the proteome, which is the protein complement encoded by the genome. In recent years, the number of proteomic experiments increased tremendously. While all fields of proteomics have made major technological advances, the biggest step was seen in bioinformatics. Biological information management relies on sequence and structure databases and powerful software tools to translate experimental results into meaningful biological hypotheses and answers. In this resource article, I provide a collection of databases and software available on the Internet that are useful to interpret genomic and proteomic data. The article is a toolbox for researchers who have genomic or proteomic datasets and need to put their findings into a biological context.
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Page 123-131

Research Resource

Timeline of Genomics (1901－1950)

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Page 132-142