Revisiting the Plasmodium falciparum RIFIN family: from comparative genomics to 3D-model prediction.

Background: Subtelomeric RIFIN genes constitute the most abundant multigene family in Plasmodium falciparum. RIFIN products are targets for the human immune response and contribute to the antigenic variability of the parasite. They are transmembrane proteins grouped into two sub-families (RIF_A and RIF_B).

A new parameter to study compositional properties of non-coding regions in eukaryotic genomes.

Genomes are characterized by global and local compositional properties that are interesting in an evolutionary perspective but also provide useful information for the identification of some functional elements. Following previous studies, in this work we investigated compositional properties of non-coding sequences in four eukaryotic genomes (C. elegans, D.

Functional genomics, new tools in malaria research.

The mosquito-transmitted unicellular parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the agent of malaria disease, still causes more than one million deaths every year in the tropical and subtropical areas of the world. New intervention strategies are needed to contrast the insurgence of resistance to effective drugs and insecticides. The complete annotated genomes of the human parasite P.

Genome-wide identification of genes upregulated at the onset of gametocytogenesis in Plasmodium falciparum.

A genome-wide expression analysis was undertaken to identify novel genes specifically activated from early stages of gametocytogenesis in Plasmodium falciparum. A comparative analysis was conducted on sexually induced cultures of reference parasite clone 3D7 and its gametocyteless derivative clone F12. Competitive hybridisations on long-oligomer microarrays representing 4488 P.

Pentamer vocabularies characterizing introns and intron-like intergenic tracts from Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster.

Overall compositional properties at the level of bases, dinucleotides and longer oligos characterize genomes of different species. In Caenorhabditis elegans, using recurrence analysis, we recognized the existence of a long-range correlation in the oligonucleotide usage of introns and intergenic regions. Through correlation analysis, this is confirmed here to be a genome-wide property of C.