Search results for "COMPUTATION"
showing 10 items of 7362 documents
From “Cellular” RNA to “Smart” RNA: Multiple Roles of RNA in Genome Stability and Beyond
2018
Coding for proteins has been considered the main function of RNA since the "central dogma" of biology was proposed. The discovery of noncoding transcripts shed light on additional roles of RNA, ranging from the support of polypeptide synthesis, to the assembly of subnuclear structures, to gene expression modulation. Cellular RNA has therefore been recognized as a central player in often unanticipated biological processes, including genomic stability. This ever-expanding list of functions inspired us to think of RNA as a "smart" phone, which has replaced the older obsolete "cellular" phone. In this review, we summarize the last two decades of advances in research on the interface between RNA…
Exploiting Helminth–Host Interactomes through Big Data
2017
Helminths facilitate their parasitic existence through the production and secretion of different molecules, including proteins. Some helminth proteins can manipulate the host's immune system, a phenomenon that is now being exploited with a view to developing therapeutics for inflammatory diseases. In recent years, hundreds of helminth genomes have been sequenced, but as a community we are still taking baby steps when it comes to identifying proteins that govern host-helminth interactions. The information generated from genomic, immunomic, and proteomic studies, as well as from cutting-edge approaches such as proteogenomics, is leading to a substantial volume of big data that can be utilised…
Basic Concepts in Molecular Biology Related to Genetics and Epigenetics.
2017
The observation that "one size does not fit all" for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, among other diseases, has driven the concept of precision medicine. The goal of precision medicine is to provide the best-targeted interventions tailored to an individual's genome. The human genome is composed of billions of sequence arrangements containing a code that controls how genes are expressed. This code depends on other nonstatic regulators that surround the DNA and constitute the epigenome. Moreover, environmental factors also play an important role in this complex regulation. This review provides a general perspective on the basic concepts of molecular biology related to g…
Generation of a novel next-generation sequencing-based method for the isolation of new human papillomavirus types
2018
Abstract With the advent of new molecular tools, the discovery of new papillomaviruses (PVs) has accelerated during the past decade, enabling the expansion of knowledge about the viral populations that inhabit the human body. Human PVs (HPVs) are etiologically linked to benign or malignant lesions of the skin and mucosa. The detection of HPV types can vary widely, depending mainly on the methodology and the quality of the biological sample. Next-generation sequencing is one of the most powerful tools, enabling the discovery of novel viruses in a wide range of biological material. Here, we report a novel protocol for the detection of known and unknown HPV types in human skin and oral gargle …
Free energy profiles for two ubiquitous damaging agents: methylation and hydroxylation of guanine in B-DNA
2017
International audience; DNA methylation and hydroxylation are two ubiquitous reactions in DNA damage induction, yet insights are scarce concerning the free energy of activation within B-DNA. We resort to multiscale simulations to investigate the attack of a hydroxyl radical and of the primary diazonium onto a guanine embedded in a solvated dodecamer. Reaction free energy profiles characterize two strongly exergonic processes, yet allow unprecedented quantification of the barrier towards this damage reaction, not higher than 6 kcal mol−1 and sometimes inexistent, and of the exergonicities. In the case of the [G(C8)-OH]˙ intermediate, we challenge the functional dependence of such simulations…
FragClust and TestClust, two informatics tools for chemical structure hierarchical clustering analysis applied to lipidomics. The example of Alzheime…
2016
Lipidomic analysis is able to measure simultaneously thousands of compounds belonging to a few lipid classes. In each lipid class, compounds differ only by the acyl radical, ranging between C10:0 (capric acid) and C24:0 (lignoceric acid). Although some metabolites have a peculiar pathological role, more often compounds belonging to a single lipid class exert the same biological effect. Here, we present a lipidomics workflow that extracts the tandem mass spectrometry data from individual files and uses them to group compounds into structurally homogeneous clusters by chemical structure hierarchical clustering analysis (CHCA). The case-to-control peak area ratios of the metabolites are then a…
HIPPIE v2.0: Enhancing meaningfulness and reliability of protein-protein interaction networks
2016
The increasing number of experimentally detected interactions between proteins makes it difficult for researchers to extract the interactions relevant for specific biological processes or diseases. This makes it necessary to accompany the large-scale detection of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) with strategies and tools to generate meaningful PPI subnetworks. To this end, we generated the Human Integrated Protein-Protein Interaction rEference or HIPPIE (http://cbdm.uni-mainz.de/hippie/). HIPPIE is a one-stop resource for the generation and interpretation of PPI networks relevant to a specific research question. We provide means to generate highly reliable, context-specific PPI networks …
Histones, Their Variants and Post-translational Modifications in Zebrafish Development.
2020
Complex multi-cellular organisms are shaped starting from a single-celled zygote, owing to elaborate developmental programs. These programs involve several layers of regulation to orchestrate the establishment of progressively diverging cell type-specific gene expression patterns. In this scenario, epigenetic modifications of chromatin are central in influencing spatiotemporal patterns of gene transcription. In fact, it is generally recognized that epigenetic changes of chromatin states impact on the accessibility of genomic DNA to regulatory proteins. Several lines of evidence highlighted that zebrafish is an excellent vertebrate model for research purposes in the field of developmental ep…
Overview of the interaction of helminth extracellular vesicles with the host and their potential functions and biological applications.
2021
Helminth Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) have emerged as important mediators in host-parasite communications, participating in the parasite survival and its pathogenic effects. In the last decade, a growing amount of information reporting the isolation and characterization of EVs from different helminth species has appeared, but unfortunately, few reports have focused on functional studies of helminth EVs in different cell lines, organoids or animal models. We here review these in vitro and in vivo studies, which clearly demonstrate that helminths secrete EVs, which affect their environment. Helminth EVs are actively internalized by different cell lines, modulating cellular functions important…
Identification of factors involved in dimorphism and pathogenicity of Zymoseptoria tritici
2017
A forward genetics approach was applied in order to investigate the molecular basis of morphological transition in the wheat pathogenic fungus Zymoseptoria tritici. Z. tritici is a dimorphic plant pathogen displaying environmentally regulated morphogenetic transition between yeast-like and hyphal growth. Considering the infection mode of Z. tritici, the switching to hyphal growth is essential for pathogenicity allowing the fungus the host invasion through natural openings like stomata. We exploited a previously developed Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation (ATMT) to generate a mutant library by insertional mutagenesis including more than 10,000 random mutants. To identify gene…