InSatDb: A Genomic Tool for Insect Geneticists

Microsatellites show tremendous variation between genomes in terms of their occurrence and composition. Availability of whole genome sequences allows us to study microsatellite characteristics of fully sequenced insect genomes to understand the evolution and biological significance of microsatellites. InSatDb is an insect microsatellite database that provides an interactive interface to query information on microsatellites annotated with size (in base pairs and repeat units); genomic location (exon, intron, up-stream or transposon); nature (perfect or imperfect); and sequence composition (repeat motif and GC%). Here, we present a snap shot of the distribution and composition of microsatellites in introns and exons of insect genomes. The data present interesting observations regarding the microsatellite life-cycle and genome flux.     

Meeting review: 2002 O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference

At the end of January I travelled to the States to speak at and attend the first O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference [14]. It was a large, well-organized and diverse meeting with an interesting history. Although the meeting was not a typical academic conference, its style will, I am sure, become more typical of meetings in both biological and computational sciences.Speakers at the event included prominent bioinformatics researchers such as Ewan Birney, Terry Gaasterland and Lincoln Stein; authors and leaders in the open source programming community like Damian Conway and Nat Torkington; and representatives from several publishing companies including the Nature Publishing Group, Current Science Group and the President of O'Reilly himself, Tim O'Reilly. There were presentations, tutorials, debates, quizzes and even a 'jam session' for musical bioinformaticists.     

Geneticists and Race

SYNOPSIS. During the twentieth century, geneticists have dramaticallychanged their assessments of the biological and social consequencesof human race differences and race crossing. In the first quarterof the century, most geneticists thought that human races differedhereditarily by important mental as well as physical differencesand that wide race crosses were biologically and socially harmful.The period from 1925 to the outbreak of World War II saw nochange in geneticists' views on hereditary mental differencesbetween human races, but a shift to agnosticism on the issueof wide race crosses. By the early 1950s, geneticists generallyargued that wide race crosses were at worst biologically harmless,but still held to earlier beliefs about hereditary mental differencesbetween races. The final period from 1951 to the present haswitnessed the shift to agnosticism on the issue of hereditarymental differences between races. The changes in geneticists'assessments of race differences and race crossing were causedbyincreased understanding of the complex relationship betweengenes and environment and by cultural changes.