Differential rhythmicity: detecting altered rhythmicity in biological data.

Motivation: Biological rhythms, such as rhythms in gene expression controlled by the cell cycle or the circadian clock, are important in cell physiology. A common type of experiment compares rhythmicity in tissues or cells either kept under different conditions or having different genotypes. Such investigations provide insights into underlying mechanisms as well as functions of rhythms.

Rhythmic degradation explains and unifies circadian transcriptome and proteome data.

The rich mammalian cellular circadian output affects thousands of genes in many cell types and has been the subject of genome-wide transcriptome and proteome studies. The results have been enigmatic because transcript peak abundances do not always follow the peaks of gene-expression activity in time. We posited that circadian degradation of mRNAs and proteins plays a pivotal role in setting their peak times.

Detecting rhythms in time series with RAIN.

A fundamental problem in research on biological rhythms is that of detecting and assessing the significance of rhythms in large sets of data. Classic methods based on Fourier theory are often hampered by the complex and unpredictable characteristics of experimental and biological noise. Robust nonparametric methods are available but are limited to specific wave forms.

GABA networks destabilize genetic oscillations in the circadian pacemaker.

Systems of coupled oscillators abound in nature. How they establish stable phase relationships under diverse conditions is fundamentally important. The mammalian suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is a self-sustained, synchronized network of circadian oscillators that coordinates daily rhythms in physiology and behavior.

Receptor-transporter interactions of canonical ATP-binding cassette import systems in prokaryotes.

ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transport systems mediate the translocation of solutes across biological membranes at the expense of ATP. They share a common modular architecture comprising two pore-forming transmembrane domains and two nucleotide binding domains. In prokaryotes, ABC transporters are involved in the uptake of a large variety of chemicals, including nutrients, osmoprotectants and signal molecules.

FragmentStore--a comprehensive database of fragments linking metabolites, toxic molecules and drugs.

Consideration of biomolecules in terms of their molecular building blocks provides valuable new information regarding their synthesis, degradation and similarity. Here, we present the FragmentStore, a resource for the comparison of fragments found in metabolites, drugs or toxic compounds. Starting from 13,000 metabolites, 16,000 drugs and 2200 toxic compounds we generated 35,000 different building blocks (fragments), which are not only relevant to their biosynthesis and degradation but also provide important information regarding side-effects and toxicity.

SuperSite: dictionary of metabolite and drug binding sites in proteins.

The increasing structural information about target-bound compounds provide a rich basis to study the binding mechanisms of metabolites and drugs. SuperSite is a database, which combines the structural information with various tools for the analysis of molecular recognition. The main data is made up of 8000 metabolites including 1300 drugs, bound to about 290,000 different receptor binding sites.