Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

By considering sequence data for individuals assessed through the 1000 Genomes Project, a team led by researchers from Yale University and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute came up with a computational method for prioritizing potential disease culprits — including those in non-protein-coding parts of the genome. As they reported online today in Science , the researchers sifted through SNP profiles in coding and non-coding sequences in 1,092 genomes, focusing on functionally annotated areas. With the help of information from the ENCODE project, mutation databases, and other data sources, they narrowed in on sequences that seem especially sensitive to change. The group tapped these mutation-sensitive sites to develop an approach called FunSeq, which proved useful for uncovering new apparent driver mutations using sequences from around 90 cancer genomes. These included almost 100 driver candidates in non-coding sequences, according to study authors, who noted that FunSeq is expected...

Using chemical genomics , researchers from Stanford University and the University of Toronto demonstrated that the majority of yeast nonessential single deletions exhibit growth defects when exposed to certain chemical or environmental stress. They also identified new candidate multi-drug resistance genes and demonstrated how clustering genes based on their co-fitness can provide clues about their function. The work appeared online today in Science . “The emergent field of chemical genomics promises that, by understanding the relations between small molecules and genes on a systems level, we might understand genomic responses to small molecule perturbants,” Do you want to know more? see also

Genetic signals that govern gene splicing are under selective evolutionary pressure and are not the product of neutral evolution, new research suggests. The research, which appeared online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , underscores the functional importance of splicing regulators। It also demonstrates a method by which exons and introns are differentiated in the genome. see also