Complete Genome Sequence of Corynebacterium minutissimum, an Opportunistic Pathogen and the Causative Agent of Erythrasma.

Corynebacterium minutissimum was first isolated in 1961 from infection sites of patients presenting with erythrasma, a common cutaneous infection characterized by a rash. Since its discovery, C. minutissimum has been identified as an opportunistic pathogen in immunosuppressed cancer and HIV patients.

Relating the disease mutation spectrum to the evolution of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR).

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common genetic disease among Caucasians, and accordingly the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein has perhaps the best characterized disease mutation spectrum with more than 1,500 causative mutations having been identified. In this study, we took advantage of that wealth of mutational information in an effort to relate site-specific evolutionary parameters with the propensity and severity of CFTR disease-causing mutations. To do this, we devised a scoring scheme for known CFTR disease-causing mutations based on the Grantham amino acid chemical difference matrix.

Prediction of transposable element derived enhancers using chromatin modification profiles.

Experimentally characterized enhancer regions have previously been shown to display specific patterns of enrichment for several different histone modifications. We modelled these enhancer chromatin profiles in the human genome and used them to guide the search for novel enhancers derived from transposable element (TE) sequences. To do this, a computational approach was taken to analyze the genome-wide histone modification landscape characterized by the ENCODE project in two human hematopoietic cell types, GM12878 and K562.