Apoptosis

Apoptotic molecular machinery: vastly increased complexity in vertebrates revealed by genome comparisons. Aravind, L. et al. Science 291 , 1279?1284 (2001) [Contents page]

The apoptotic machinery evolved from signalling pathways present in the common ancestor of plants, animals and fungi. Analysis of the human, fly and nematode genomes now reveals an increase in both the number and complexity of apoptosis-related proteins in vertebrates.

DNA repair

Human DNA repair genes. Wood, R. D. et al. Science 291 , 1284?1289 (2001) [Contents page]

This catalogue groups 130 repair genes on the basis of function ? for instance, base-excision repair, nucleotide-excision repair or mismatch repair ? or sequence homology to known repair genes in other organisms. A strong message is the likelihood of clinical applications relating to human DNA repair genes.

Membrane dynamics

A genomic perspective on membrane compartment organization. Bock, J. B. et al. Nature 409 , 839?841 (2001) [Full text]

The authors compared four protein families involved in membrane traffic (SNAREs, Rabs, coats and members of the Sec1 family) in four different organisms (yeast, worm, fly and human). There was no difference in the basic machinery between the unicellular yeast and multicellular flies or worms. But humans have about twice as many genes in each of these families. The final (?) count is 35 SNAREs, 60 Rabs and 53 coat complex subunits.

Cytoskeleton

Genomics, the cytoskeleton and motility. Pollard, T. D. Nature 409 , 842?843 (2001) [Full text]

The search for new cytoskeletal proteins yielded mixed results depending on the protein family. The author found seven highly divergent actin genes and seven new Arp genes. But the search yielded essentially no new myosins and kinesins in addition to the 40 or so known members of each of these families. One explanation is that it is much harder to assemble the genes of large multi-domain proteins.

Cell cycle

Can sequencing shed light on cell cycling? Murray, A. W. & Marks, D. Nature 409 , 844?846 (2001) [Full text]

The authors were disappointed to find only a few new cyclins and no new Cdks and spindle checkpoint proteins. No need to be disappointed ? this could simply mean that they've done an excellent job in the past!