Sequencing and Analysis of the Hydra Genome
Chapman, Kirkness et al., Nature
An international research collaboration reports their sequencing and analysis of the Hydra magnipapillata genome, and compare it to the genomes of several other organisms. "The Hydra genome has been shaped by bursts of transposable element expansion, horizontal gene transfer, trans-splicing, and simplification of gene structure and gene content that parallel simplification of the Hydra life cycle," the authors write. They team suggests that comparisons of the Hydra genome to the reported sequences of other animals have helped them to elucidate the evolution of several of the organism's characteristics.
In Sum, We Found Nothing, But It's What We Wanted
November 24, 2009
A group of German researchers led by Pawel Smialowski and Philipp Pagel created a database, called the Negatome, of protein interactions that are unlikely to occur. As the report in Nucleic Acids Research, they scoured the literature for evidence against physical interactions of proteins and also analyzed protein complexes deposited in the Protein Data Bank to come up with their database, which may be found here. They report on 1,892 non-interacting proteins and predict a further 979 non-interacting domain pairs.
"The negatome is well on the way to become a 'gold-standard' dataset for training predictors of protein–protein interaction, thus proving that negative results are still results," adds Dr Jim at Mental Indigestion.
Just watch out for Jonathan Eisen's Worst New Omics Award.
