SPOC: A widely distributed domain associated with cancer,apoptosis and transcription

Background  

The Split ends (Spen) family are large proteins characterised by N-terminal RNA recognition motifs (RRMs) and a conserved SPOC (Spen paralog and ortholog C-terminal) domain. The aim of this study is to characterize the family at the sequence level.     

SEPALLATA3: the 'glue' for MADS box transcription factor complex formation

Background  

Plant MADS box proteins play important roles in a plethora of developmental processes. In order to regulate specific sets of target genes, MADS box proteins dimerize and are thought to assemble into multimeric complexes. In this study a large-scale yeast three-hybrid screen is utilized to provide insight into the higher-order complex formation capacity of the Arabidopsis MADS box family. SEPALLATA3 (SEP3) has been shown to mediate complex formation and, therefore, special attention is paid to this factor in this study.     

microRNA evolution in a human transcription factor and microRNA regulatory network

Background  

microRNAs (miRNAs) are important cellular components. The understanding of their evolution is of critical importance for the understanding of their function. Although some specific evolutionary rules of miRNAs have been revealed, the rules of miRNA evolution in cellular networks remain largely unexplored. According to knowledge from protein-coding genes, the investigations of gene evolution in the context of biological networks often generate valuable observations that cannot be obtained by traditional approaches.     

Identification of novel conserved peptide uORF homology groups in Arabidopsis and rice reveals ancient eukaryotic origin of select groups and preferential association with transcription factor-encoding genes

Background  

Upstream open reading frames (uORFs) can mediate translational control over the largest, or major ORF (mORF) in response to starvation, polyamine concentrations, and sucrose concentrations. One plant uORF with conserved peptide sequences has been shown to exert this control in an amino acid sequence-dependent manner but generally it is not clear what kinds of genes are regulated, or how extensively this mechanism is invoked in a given genome.     

Integrated cellular network of transcription regulations and protein-protein interactions

Background  

With the accumulation of increasing omics data, a key goal of systems biology is to construct networks at different cellular levels to investigate cellular machinery of the cell. However, there is currently no satisfactory method to construct an integrated cellular network that combines the gene regulatory network and the signaling regulatory pathway.     

Selective control of primer usage in multiplex one-step reverse transcription PCR

Background  

Multiplex RT-PCR is a valuable technique used for pathogen identification, disease detection and relative quantification of gene expression. The simplification of this protocol into a one-step procedure saves time and reagents. However, intensive PCR optimization is often required to overcome competing undesired PCR primer extension during the RT step.