Publications by authors named "Qiao-Wen Tan"

Diurnal gene expression is a pervasive phenomenon occurring across all kingdoms of life, orchestrating adaptive responses to daily environmental fluctuations and thus enhancing organismal fitness. Our understanding of the plant circadian clock is primarily derived from studies in Arabidopsis, and direct comparisons are difficult due to differences in gene family sizes. To this end, the identification of functional orthologs based on diurnal and tissue expression is necessary.

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Article Synopsis
  • Abiotic stresses harm ecosystems and crop yields, and climate change is expected to make these stresses more common and severe.
  • Research using the plant Marchantia polymorpha examines how various combinations of seven abiotic stresses affect its phenotype and gene expression, revealing both similarities and differences when compared to Arabidopsis.
  • The study indicates that Marchantia uses a complex set of transcription factors to prioritize responses to specific stresses, and also suggests that it can predict gene expression under multiple combined stresses through a regression model.
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Gene expression data for Archaeplastida are accumulating exponentially, with more than 300 000 RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) experiments available for hundreds of species. The gene expression data stem from thousands of experiments that capture gene expression in various organs, tissues, cell types, (a)biotic perturbations, and genotypes. Advances in software tools make it possible to process all these data in a matter of weeks on modern office computers, giving us the possibility to study gene expression in a kingdom-wide manner for the first time.

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Both microplastic and biofilm are contamination sources in drinking water, but their integrated impacts on water quality have been rarely studied, especially in drinking water distribution pipes with complex hydraulic conditions. This study explored the impacts of hydraulic conditions (0-2 m/s) on microplastic biofilm (MP-BM) development, shear stresses distribution, and microbial community structures. The research was conducted for two weeks using a pilot test device to simulate practical water pipes.

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Background: The human proteins TMTC1, TMTC2, TMTC3 and TMTC4 have been experimentally shown to be components of a new O-mannosylation pathway. Their own mannosyl-transferase activity has been suspected but their actual enzymatic potential has not been demonstrated yet. So far, sequence analysis of TMTCs has been compromised by evolutionary sequence divergence within their membrane-embedded N-terminal region, sequence inaccuracies in the protein databases and the difficulty to interpret the large functional variety of known homologous proteins (mostly sugar transferases and some with known 3D structure).

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Background: Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing health problem that is projected to cause more deaths than cancer by 2050. Consequently, novel antibiotics are urgently needed. Since more than half of the available antibiotics target the structurally conserved bacterial ribosomes, factors involved in protein synthesis are thus prime targets for the development of novel antibiotics.

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As genomes become more and more available, gene function prediction presents itself as one of the major hurdles in our quest to extract meaningful information on the biological processes genes participate in. In order to facilitate gene function prediction, we show how our user-friendly pipeline, the Large-Scale Transcriptomic Analysis Pipeline in Cloud (LSTrAP-Cloud), can be useful in helping biologists make a shortlist of genes involved in a biological process that they might be interested in, by using a single gene of interest as bait. The LSTrAP-Cloud is based on Google Colaboratory, and provides user-friendly tools that process quality-control RNA sequencing data streamed from the European Nucleotide Archive.

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Prediction of gene function and gene regulatory networks is one of the most active topics in bioinformatics. The accumulation of publicly available gene expression data for hundreds of plant species, together with advances in bioinformatical methods and affordable computing, sets ingenuity as one of the major bottlenecks in understanding gene function and regulation. Here, we show how a credit card-sized computer retailing for <50 USD can be used to rapidly predict gene function and infer regulatory networks from RNA sequencing data.

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Almost all organisms coordinate some aspects of their biology through the diurnal cycle. Photosynthetic organisms, and plants especially, have established complex programs that coordinate physiological, metabolic and developmental processes with the changing light. The diurnal regulation of the underlying transcriptional processes is observed when groups of functionally related genes (gene modules) are expressed at a specific time of the day.

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Malaria is a tropical parasitic disease caused by the Plasmodium genus, which resulted in an estimated 219 million cases of malaria and 435 000 malaria-related deaths in 2017. Despite the availability of the Plasmodium falciparum genome since 2002, 74% of the genes remain uncharacterized. To remedy this paucity of functional information, we used transcriptomic data to build gene co-expression networks for two Plasmodium species (P.

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Cellulose is an essential morphogenic polysaccharide that is central to the stability of plant cell walls and provides an important raw material for a range of plant-based fiber and fuel industries. The past decade has seen a substantial rise in the identification of cellulose synthesis-related components and in our understanding of how these components function. Much of this research has been conducted in Arabidopsis thaliana (arabidopsis); however, it has become increasingly evident that many of the components and their functions are conserved.

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Suboptimal immune responses to pathogens contribute to chronic infections. One way to improve immune responses is to boost Ag presentation. In this study, we investigate the potential of the tripartite motif-containing 21 (TRIM21) pathway.

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