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Gene products involved in the naturally occurring process of bacterial conjugation are usually encoded on plasmids. A new study shows that in Mycobacterium smegmatis, a unique conjugative transfer is mediated by multiple cis-acting sequences present on the chromosome and requires host recombination functions.
The spatial organization of the interphase nucleus is related to the differentiation state of the cell and has a role in establishing tissue-specific patterns of gene expression. Investigation of a tissue-specific nuclear protein has identified a new mechanism of cell-specific gene regulation that links nuclear architecture, chromatin structure and gene transcription.
Centrosome abnormalities are linked to genomic instability and are considered one possible cause of cancer. A recent study shows that 'abnormal' inactive centrosomes thought to be deleterious to cells actually provide an accurate backup mechanism to the G2/M checkpoint, allowing specific elimination of nuclei with damaged DNA.
A new study attempts to amplify and clone all the predicted protein-encoding open reading frames (ORFs) for Caenorhabditis elegans. This analysis confirms many of the predicted genes but suggests roughly 50% of them require correction. Recombining the ORFs into a number of different expression systems can generate functional proteomics kits for characterizing protein activity and interaction networks.
A principal goal of genetic research is to identify specific genotypes that are associated with human phenotypes. It will soon be possible to conduct genome-wide genotyping on a massive scale. Our current approaches for defining and assaying phenotypes may be inadequate for making optimal use of such genotypic data. We propose an international effort to create phenomic databases, that is, comprehensive assemblages of systematically collected phenotypic information, and to develop new approaches for analyzing such phenotypic data. We term this effort the Human Phenome Project and suggest a scientific and organizational scope for the project.
