Community Approaches for Integrating Environmental Exposures into Human Models of Disease.

Background: A critical challenge in genomic medicine is identifying the genetic and environmental risk factors for disease. Currently, the available data links a majority of known coding human genes to phenotypes, but the environmental component of human disease is extremely underrepresented in these linked data sets. Without environmental exposure information, our ability to realize precision health is limited, even with the promise of modern genomics.

Novel G-protein-coupled receptor-like proteins in the plant pathogenic fungus Magnaporthe grisea.

Background: The G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are one of the largest protein families in human and other animal genomes, but no more than 10 GPCRs have been characterized in fungi. Do fungi contain only this handful or are there more receptors to be discovered? We asked this question using the recently sequenced genome of the fungal plant pathogen Magnaporthe grisea.

Results: Proteins with significant similarity to fungus-specific and other eukaryotic GPCRs were identified in M.

An eight-cysteine-containing CFEM domain unique to a group of fungal membrane proteins.

CFEM, an eight cysteine-containing domain, has been identified by analyzing over 25 fungal sequences selected from database sequence searches. Features of CFEM suggest that it is a novel domain with characteristics distinct from known cysteine-rich domains. Some CFEM-containing proteins (e.