Vom Phänotyp zum Genotyp

Forward Genomics – a comparative genomics approach to link phenotype to genotype Despite availability of several sequenced genomes, we know very little about the specific changes in the DNA that underlie phenotypic differences between species. The main reason is that species differ by both numerous genomic and phenotypic changes. A new comparative genomics method addresses this question by for phenotypes with independent evolutionary losses by searching for genomic regions that exhibit an elevated number of mutations in exactly these phenotype‐loss species. The near future sequencing of thousands of novel genomes will make it possible to use comparative genomics to systematically search for such DNA changes that are associated with phenotypic differences.     

Restauro-G： A Rapid Genome Re-Annotation System for Comparative Genomics

of complete genome sequences submitted directly from sequencing projects are diverse in terms of annotation strategies and update frequencies. These inconsistencies make comparative studies difficult. To allow rapid data preparation of a large number of complete genomes, automation and speed are important for genome re-annotation. Here we introduce an open-source rapid genome re-annotation software system, Restauro-G, specialized for bacterial genomes. Restauro-G re-annotates a genome by similarity searches utilizing the BLASTLike Alignment Tool, referring to protein databases such as UniProt KB, NCBI nr, NCBI COGs, Pfam, and PSORTb. Re-annotation by Restauro-G achieved over 98% accuracy for most bacterial chromosomes in comparison with the original manually curated annotation of EMBL releases. Restauro-G was developed in the generic bioinformatics workbench G-language Genome Analysis Environment and is distributed at http：//restauro-g.iab.keio.ac.jp/ under the GNU General Public License.     

昆虫基因组及数据库研究进展

基因组序列为昆虫分子生物学研究提供丰富的数据资源,推动系统生物学在古老的昆虫学中蓬勃发展。昆虫基因组学研究已经成为当前的研究热点,目前在NCBI登录注册的昆虫基因组测序计划有494项,其中已提交原始测序数据的昆虫有225种,完成基因组拼接的有215种,具有基因注释的有65种,公开发表的昆虫基因组有43篇。本文综述了测序技术发展的历史及其对昆虫基因组研究的推动作用、昆虫基因组的组装和注释及其存在的问题、昆虫基因组测序进展、昆虫基因组数据库的发展及基因数据挖掘利用的基本思路和对策,以及昆虫基因大数据在害虫防治和资源昆虫利用中的应用前景。     

林木基因组学研究进展

林木基因组学研究进展迅速。结构基因组学方面,已构建了近40个主要造林树种的遗传连锁图谱,在不同树种中定位了30余个重要的数量性状位点,在部分树种中开展了基因组比较和综合图谱构建研究,杨树的全基因组测序已经完成,桉树的全基因组测序正在进行。功能基因组学方面,已分析了主要造林树种多种组织的转录组EST序列,对林木次生生长与木材形成、开花和抗寒性的形成等过程开展了功能基因组学研究。另外,探讨了林木基因组学研究的发展趋势,以期为我国林木基因组学研究提供有益的参考。     

FOUNTAIN: A JAVA open-source package to assist large sequencing projects

Background  

Better automation, lower cost per reaction and a heightened interest in comparative genomics has led to a dramatic increase in DNA sequencing activities. Although the large sequencing projects of specialized centers are supported by in-house bioinformatics groups, many smaller laboratories face difficulties managing the appropriate processing and storage of their sequencing output. The challenges include documentation of clones, templates and sequencing reactions, and the storage, annotation and analysis of the large number of generated sequences.     

Farm animal genomics and informatics: an update

Farm animal genomics is of interest to a wide audience of researchers because of the utility derived from understanding how genomics and proteomics function in various organisms. Applications such as xenotransplantation, increased livestock productivity, bioengineering new materials, products and even fabrics are several reasons for thriving farm animal genome activity. Currently mined in rapidly growing data warehouses, completed genomes of chicken, fish and cows are available but are largely stored in decentralized data repositories. In this paper, we provide an informatics primer on farm animal bioinformatics and genome project resources which drive attention to the most recent advances in the field. We hope to provide individuals in biotechnology and in the farming industry with information on resources and updates concerning farm animal genome projects.     

Application of Meta-Mesh on the analysis of microbial communities from human associated-habitats

With the current fast accumulation of microbial community samples and related metagenomic sequencing data, data integration and analysis system is urgently needed for in-depth analysis of large number of metagenomic samples (also referred to as “microbial communities”) of interest. Although several existing databases have collected a large number of metagenomic samples, they mostly serve as data repositories with crude annotations, and offer limited functionality for analysis. Moreover, the few available tools for comparative analysis in the literature could only support the comparison of a few pre-defined set of metagenomic samples. To facilitate comprehensive comparative analysis on large amount of diverse microbial community samples, we have designed a Meta-Mesh system for a variety of analyses including quantitative analysis of similarities among microbial communities and computation of the correlation between the meta-information of these samples. We have used Meta-Mesh for systematically and efficiently analyses on diverse sets of human associate-habitat microbial community samples. Results have shown that Meta-Mesh could serve well as an efficient data analysis platform for discovery of clusters, biomarker and other valuable biological information from a large pool of human microbial samples.     

PRECIS: protein reports engineered from concise information in SWISS-PROT

MOTIVATION: There have been several endeavours to address the problem of annotating sequence data computationally, but the task is non-trivial and few tools have emerged that gather useful information on a given sequence, or set of sequences, in a simple and convenient manner. As more genome projects bear fruit, the mass of uncharacterized sequence data accumulating in public repositories grows ever larger. There is thus a pressing need for tools to support the process of automatic analysis and annotation of newly determined sequences. With this in mind, we have developed PRECIS, which automatically creates protein reports from sets of SWISS-PROT entries, collating results into structured reports, detailing known biological and medical information, literature and database cross-references, and relevant keywords.     

Annotating eukaryote genomes

The Genome Annotation Assessment Project tested current methods of gene identification, including a critical assessment of the accuracy of different methods. Two new databases have provided new resources for gene annotation: these are the InterPro database of protein domains and motifs, and the Gene Ontology database for terms that describe the molecular functions and biological roles of gene products. Efforts in genome annotation are most often based upon advances in computer systems that are specifically designed to deal with the tremendous amounts of data being generated by current sequencing projects. These efforts in analysis are being linked to new ways of visualizing computationally annotated genomes.