Uncovering Pseudogenes and Intergenic Protein-coding Sequences in TriTryps' Genomes.

Trypanosomatids belong to a remarkable group of unicellular, parasitic organisms of the order Kinetoplastida, an early diverging branch of the phylogenetic tree of eukaryotes, exhibiting intriguing biological characteristics affecting gene expression (intronless polycistronic transcription, trans-splicing, and RNA editing), metabolism, surface molecules, and organelles (compartmentalization of glycolysis, variation of the surface molecules, and unique mitochondrial DNA), cell biology and life cycle (phagocytic vacuoles evasion and intricate patterns of cell morphogenesis). With numerous genomic-scale data of several trypanosomatids becoming available since 2005 (genomes, transcriptomes, and proteomes), the scientific community can further investigate the mechanisms underlying these unusual features and address other unexplored phenomena possibly revealing biological aspects of the early evolution of eukaryotes. One fundamental aspect comprises the processes and mechanisms involved in the acquisition and loss of genes throughout the evolutionary history of these primitive microorganisms.

Bio-Strings: A Relational Database Data-Type for Dealing with Large Biosequences.

DNA sequencers output a large set of very long biological data strings that we should persist in databases rather than basic text file systems. Many different data models and database management systems (DBMS) may deal with both storage and efficiency issues regarding genomic datasets. Specifically, there is a need for handling strings with variable sizes while keeping their biological meaning.

Systematic Identification and Classification of β-Lactamases Based on Sequence Similarity Criteria: β-Lactamase Annotation.

β-lactamases, the enzymes responsible for resistance to β-lactam antibiotics, are widespread among prokaryotic genera. However, current β-lactamase classification schemes do not represent their present diversity. Here, we propose a workflow to identify and classify β-lactamases.

Mining of potential drug targets through the identification of essential and analogous enzymes in the genomes of pathogens of Glycine max, Zea mays and Solanum lycopersicum.

Pesticides are one of the most widely used pest and disease control measures in plant crops and their indiscriminate use poses a direct risk to the health of populations and environment around the world. As a result, there is a great need for the development of new, less toxic molecules to be employed against plant pathogens. In this work, we employed an in silico approach to study the genes coding for enzymes of the genomes of three commercially important plants, soybean (Glycine max), tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and corn (Zea mays), as well as 15 plant pathogens (4 bacteria and 11 fungi), focusing on revealing a set of essential and non-homologous isofunctional enzymes (NISEs) that could be prioritized as drug targets.

Functional Analogy in Human Metabolism: Enzymes with Different Biological Roles or Functional Redundancy?

Since enzymes catalyze almost all chemical reactions that occur in living organisms, it is crucial that genes encoding such activities are correctly identified and functionally characterized. Several studies suggest that the fraction of enzymatic activities in which multiple events of independent origin have taken place during evolution is substantial. However, this topic is still poorly explored, and a comprehensive investigation of the occurrence, distribution, and implications of these events has not been done so far.

Genome Comparison of an Ancestral Isolate and a Modern Isolate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis of the Beijing Lineage from São Paulo, Brazil.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis of the Bejing subtype (MtbB) is transmitted efficiently in high burden countries for this genotype. A higher virulence was associated with isolates of the "modern" Beijing genotype sub-lineages when compared to "ancient" ones. Here, we report the full genomes of the strain representing these two genotypes from Brazil, a country with a low incidence of MtbB.

Identification of proteins in Streptococcus pneumoniae by reverse vaccinology and genetic diversity of these proteins in clinical isolates.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Virulence-associated proteins common and conserved among all capsular types now represent the best strategy to combat pneumococcal infections. Our aim was to identify conserved targets in pneumococci that showed positive prediction for lipoprotein and extracellular subcellular location using bioinformatics programs and verify the distribution and the degree of conservation of these targets in pneumococci.

The Comparative Genomics and Phylogenomics of Leishmania amazonensis Parasite.

Leishmaniasis is an infectious disease caused by Leishmania species. Leishmania amazonensis is a New World Leishmania species belonging to the Mexicana complex, which is able to cause all types of leishmaniasis infections. The L.

The Purine Bias of Coding Sequences is Determined by Physicochemical Constraints on Proteins.

For this report, we analyzed protein secondary structures in relation to the statistics of three nucleotide codon positions. The purpose of this investigation was to find which properties of the ribosome, tRNA or protein level, could explain the purine bias (Rrr) as it is observed in coding DNA. We found that the Rrr pattern is the consequence of a regularity (the codon structure) resulting from physicochemical constraints on proteins and thermodynamic constraints on ribosomal machinery.

Genetic characterization of a novel bovine papillomavirus member of the Deltapapillomavirus genus.

This report describes the complete genomic sequence and taxonomic position of BPV type 13. The BPV13 genome was amplified using the multiply primed rolling-circle amplification technique and long-template PCR employing two specific primers. The two long PCR fragments obtained were cloned and sequenced via primer walking.

Specific and nonhomologous isofunctional enzymes of the genetic information processing pathways as potential therapeutical targets for tritryps.

Leishmania major, Trypanosoma brucei, and Trypanosoma cruzi (Tritryps) are unicellular protozoa that cause leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease, respectively. Most drugs against them were discovered through the screening of large numbers of compounds against whole parasites. Nonhomologous isofunctional enzymes (NISEs) may present good opportunities for the identification of new putative drug targets because, though sharing the same enzymatic activity, they possess different three-dimensional structures thus allowing the development of molecules against one or other isoform.

Genotyping of Mycobacterium leprae from Brazilian leprosy patients suggests the occurrence of reinfection or of bacterial population shift during disease relapse.

We performed genotyping of Mycobacterium leprae present in skin biopsy samples that were collected during the first and the second disease occurrences from eight leprosy patients, seven of whom were diagnosed as suffering from disease relapse. Sequence analysis of part of the M. leprae rpoB, folP1, gyrB and gyrA genes did not show genetic change that supported the presence of drug-resistant bacilli.

ProteinWorldDB: querying radical pairwise alignments among protein sets from complete genomes.

Motivation: Many analyses in modern biological research are based on comparisons between biological sequences, resulting in functional, evolutionary and structural inferences. When large numbers of sequences are compared, heuristics are often used resulting in a certain lack of accuracy. In order to improve and validate results of such comparisons, we have performed radical all-against-all comparisons of 4 million protein sequences belonging to the RefSeq database, using an implementation of the Smith-Waterman algorithm.

ESTs from Seeds to Assist the Selective Breeding of Jatropha curcas L. for Oil and Active Compounds.

We report here on the characterization of a cDNA library from seeds of Jatropha curcas L. at three stages of fruit maturation before yellowing. We sequenced a total of 2200 clones and obtained a set of 931 non-redundant sequences (unigenes) after trimming and quality control, ie, 140 contigs and 791 singlets with PHRED quality ≥10.

Sequence analysis of NAT2 gene in Brazilians: identification of undescribed single nucleotide polymorphisms and molecular modeling of the N-acetyltransferase 2 protein structure.

N-Acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) metabolizes a variety of xenobiotics that includes many drugs, chemicals and carcinogens. This enzyme is genetically variable in human populations and polymorphisms in the NAT2 gene have been associated with drug toxicity and efficacy as well as cancer susceptibility. Here, we have focused on the identification of NAT2 variants in Brazilian individuals from two different regions, Rio de Janeiro and Goiás, by direct sequencing, and on the characterization of new haplotypes after cloning and re-sequencing.

AnEnPi: identification and annotation of analogous enzymes.

Background: Enzymes are responsible for the catalysis of the biochemical reactions in metabolic pathways. Analogous enzymes are able to catalyze the same reactions, but they present no significant sequence similarity at the primary level, and possibly different tertiary structures as well. They are thought to have arisen as the result of independent evolutionary events.

ReRep: computational detection of repetitive sequences in genome survey sequences (GSS).

Background: Genome survey sequences (GSS) offer a preliminary global view of a genome since, unlike ESTs, they cover coding as well as non-coding DNA and include repetitive regions of the genome. A more precise estimation of the nature, quantity and variability of repetitive sequences very early in a genome sequencing project is of considerable importance, as such data strongly influence the estimation of genome coverage, library quality and progress in scaffold construction. Also, the elimination of repetitive sequences from the initial assembly process is important to avoid errors and unnecessary complexity.

BioParser: a tool for processing of sequence similarity analysis reports.

Unlabelled: The widely used programs BLAST (in this article, 'BLAST' includes both the National Center for Biotechnology Information [NCBI] BLAST and the Washington University version WU BLAST) and FASTA for similarity searches in nucleotide and protein databases usually result in copious output. However, when large query sets are used, human inspection rapidly becomes impractical. BioParser is a Perl program for parsing BLAST and FASTA reports.

Squid - a simple bioinformatics grid.

Background: BLAST is a widely used genetic research tool for analysis of similarity between nucleotide and protein sequences. This paper presents a software application entitled "Squid" that makes use of grid technology. The current version, as an example, is configured for BLAST applications, but adaptation for other computing intensive repetitive tasks can be easily accomplished in the open source version.

Genotypic variation and stability of four variable-number tandem repeats and their suitability for discriminating strains of Mycobacterium leprae.

It has not been possible to distinguish different strains of Mycobacterium leprae according to their genetic sequence. However, the genome contains several variable-number tandem repeats (VNTR), which have been used effectively in strain typing of other bacteria. To determine their suitability for differentiating M.