Characterization of Histone Genes from the Bivalve Lucina Pectinata.

is a clam that lives in sulfide-rich environments and houses intracellular sulfide-oxidizing endosymbionts. To identify new proteins, we produced libraries for genome and transcriptome sequencing and assembled them de novo. We searched for histone-like sequences using the histone H3 partial nucleotide sequence against our previously described genome assembly to obtain the complete coding region and identify H3 coding sequences from mollusk sequences in Genbank.

Correction: Evolution of the Twist Subfamily Vertebrate Proteins: Discovery of a Signature Motif and Origin of the Twist1 Glycine-Rich Motifs in the Amino-Terminus Disordered Domain.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Evolution of the Twist Subfamily Vertebrate Proteins: Discovery of a Signature Motif and Origin of the Twist1 Glycine-Rich Motifs in the Amino-Terminus Disordered Domain.

Twist proteins belong to the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family of multifunctional transcriptional factors. These factors are known to use domains other than the common bHLH in protein-protein interactions. There has been much work characterizing the bHLH domain and the C-terminus in protein-protein interactions but despite a few attempts more focus is needed at the N-terminus.

MPI-PHYLIP: parallelizing computationally intensive phylogenetic analysis routines for the analysis of large protein families.

Background: Phylogenetic study of protein sequences provides unique and valuable insights into the molecular and genetic basis of important medical and epidemiological problems as well as insights about the origins and development of physiological features in present day organisms. Consensus phylogenies based on the bootstrap and other resampling methods play a crucial part in analyzing the robustness of the trees produced for these analyses.

Methodology: Our focus was to increase the number of bootstrap replications that can be performed on large protein datasets using the maximum parsimony, distance matrix, and maximum likelihood methods.

Functional, genetic and bioinformatic characterization of a calcium/calmodulin kinase gene in Sporothrix schenckii.

Background: Sporothrix schenckii is a pathogenic, dimorphic fungus, the etiological agent of sporotrichosis, a subcutaneous lymphatic mycosis. Dimorphism in S. schenckii responds to second messengers such as cAMP and calcium, suggesting the possible involvement of a calcium/calmodulin kinase in its regulation.