Distinct types of disorder in the human proteome: functional implications for alternative splicing.

Intrinsically disordered regions have been associated with various cellular processes and are implicated in several human diseases, but their exact roles remain unclear. We previously defined two classes of conserved disordered regions in budding yeast, referred to as "flexible" and "constrained" conserved disorder. In flexible disorder, the property of disorder has been positionally conserved during evolution, whereas in constrained disorder, both the amino acid sequence and the property of disorder have been conserved.

Conserved rules govern genetic interaction degree across species.

Background: Synthetic genetic interactions have recently been mapped on a genome scale in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, providing a functional view of the central processes of eukaryotic life. Currently, comprehensive genetic interaction networks have not been determined for other species, and we therefore sought to model conserved aspects of genetic interaction networks in order to enable the transfer of knowledge between species.

Results: Using a combination of physiological and evolutionary properties of genes, we built models that successfully predicted the genetic interaction degree of S.

An omics perspective of protein disorder.

Disordered regions within proteins have increasingly been associated with various cellular functions. Identifying the specific roles played by disorder in these functions has proved difficult. However, the development of reliable prediction algorithms has expanded the study of disorder from a few anecdotal examples to a proteome-wide scale.

Putting genetic interactions in context through a global modular decomposition.

Genetic interactions provide a powerful perspective into gene function, but our knowledge of the specific mechanisms that give rise to these interactions is still relatively limited. The availability of a global genetic interaction map in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, covering ∼30% of all possible double mutant combinations, provides an unprecedented opportunity for an unbiased assessment of the native structure within genetic interaction networks and how it relates to gene function and modular organization. Toward this end, we developed a data mining approach to exhaustively discover all block structures within this network, which allowed for its complete modular decomposition.

Systematic exploration of essential yeast gene function with temperature-sensitive mutants.

Conditional temperature-sensitive (ts) mutations are valuable reagents for studying essential genes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We constructed 787 ts strains, covering 497 (∼45%) of the 1,101 essential yeast genes, with ∼30% of the genes represented by multiple alleles. All of the alleles are integrated into their native genomic locus in the S288C common reference strain and are linked to a kanMX selectable marker, allowing further genetic manipulation by synthetic genetic array (SGA)-based, high-throughput methods.

Bringing order to protein disorder through comparative genomics and genetic interactions.

Background: Intrinsically disordered regions are widespread, especially in proteomes of higher eukaryotes. Recently, protein disorder has been associated with a wide variety of cellular processes and has been implicated in several human diseases. Despite its apparent functional importance, the sheer range of different roles played by protein disorder often makes its exact contribution difficult to interpret.

Genetic interactions reveal the evolutionary trajectories of duplicate genes.

The characterization of functional redundancy and divergence between duplicate genes is an important step in understanding the evolution of genetic systems. Large-scale genetic network analysis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae provides a powerful perspective for addressing these questions through quantitative measurements of genetic interactions between pairs of duplicated genes, and more generally, through the study of genome-wide genetic interaction profiles associated with duplicated genes. We show that duplicate genes exhibit fewer genetic interactions than other genes because they tend to buffer one another functionally, whereas observed interactions are non-overlapping and reflect their divergent roles.

The genetic landscape of a cell.

A genome-scale genetic interaction map was constructed by examining 5.4 million gene-gene pairs for synthetic genetic interactions, generating quantitative genetic interaction profiles for approximately 75% of all genes in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A network based on genetic interaction profiles reveals a functional map of the cell in which genes of similar biological processes cluster together in coherent subsets, and highly correlated profiles delineate specific pathways to define gene function.