Introduction to Gene Analysis Tool
A
major application of bioinformatics is analysis of the full genomes of
organisms that have been sequenced starting in the late 1990s, including
microbial genomes, the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the
nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the plant Arabidopsis thaliana,
the fruit fly Drosophila, and the human genome. Many additional genome
sequencing projects are either being planned or are already under way.
Traditional genetics and molecular biology have been directed toward
understanding the role of a particular gene or protein in an important
biological process. A gene is sequenced to predict its function or to
manipulate its activity or expression. In contrast, the availability of genome
sequences provides the sequences of all the genes of an organism so that
important genes influencing metabolism, cellular differentiation and
development, and disease processes in animals and plants, can be identified and
the relevant genes manipulated. The challenge is to identify those genes that
are predicted to have a particular biological function and then to design
experiments to test that prediction. This analysis depends on gene prediction
using gene models for each organism followed by sequence comparisons between
the predicted proteins with other proteins whose function is known from
biological studies. To facilitate such comparisons, the genomes of a number of
model organisms about which a great deal of biological information is available
have been sequenced. Many years of genetic and biochemical research of these
model organisms—the bacterium Escherichia coli, S. cerevisiae, C.
elegans, A. thaliana, and D. melanogaster—have led to the
accumulation of a large amount of information on gene organization and
function. The mouse Mus musculus is a genetic model for humans because
the two species are so closely related through evolution. A newly identified
gene in another organism can be compared to the existing database of
information to find whether it has a similar function. Genes involved in human
disease, for example, are sometimes found to be similar to a fruit fly gene at
the protein sequence level. The genetic effects of mutations in the fruit fly’s
gene will then provide a biochemical, cellular, or developmental model for the
human disease. Interestingly, it has not been possible to identify the function
of all the genes in model organisms. As a result, a similar gene or family of
genes may be found in several organisms, including a model organism, but the
function is not known because the gene functions have not yet been analyzed.
Hence, continued biological analysis of model organisms in those areas that are
not tractable by the tools of bioinformatics has many important applications.
Index Page for Gene Analysis Tool
Main Gene Analysis Tool Page
Methodology
Posted by:-Indian Biological Sciences and Research Institute, NOIDA
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