Category Archives: Genome

Cape Town In the wake of publication of the tsetse fly's genome, scientists say insights from the discovery are likely to open up new avenues of research into possible ways of controlling the flies and the parasitic disease they spread: sleeping sickness.

It took an international team - more than half of whom are from Africa - more than ten years to decode the genetic blueprint of Glossina morsitans, one species of tsetse fly. But the results were finally published in Science last month (25 April).

The WHO says cases of sleeping sickness, which occurs in 36 Sub-Saharan African countries, fell for the first time in 50 years to below 10,000 in 2009. The WHO aims to eradicate the disease by 2020.

Geoffrey M. Attardo of Yale University, United States, led the project. He tells SciDev.Net that charting the fly's genome will help scientists understand its basic biology, and thus potentially design ways to control it.

Identifying the species' protein-coding genes offers an exciting opportunity to understand the molecular basis for its behavioural, ecological and physiological traits, says Chris Weldon, a fly expert at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

For example, the researchers discovered a set of visual and odour proteins that seem to drive key behavioural responses such as searching for hosts or mates.

One of these explains the tsetse fly's attraction to the blue-black coloured cloths - a trait already widely exploited in the development of traps to reduce the disease's spread.

The work could also open up other control strategies, says Jan Van Den Abbeele of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, who led the international team's work on the fly's salivary gland genes. This was published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases as one of several papers recently released by the project alongside the main Science one.

These methods could include, he says, producing genetically engineering and releasing males that are sterile, to keep fly numbers down. This approach was approved in Brazil last month as a means of controlling mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever.

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Africa: Tsetse Fly Genome Offers Hope in Sleeping Sickness Fight

NextGEN CRISPR Genome Engineering -- Clean Genome Editing without Off Target Mutati
he CRISPR-Cas9 system has gained popularity due to its simplicity and high efficiency. However, the CRISPR technology has been plagued by problems with off-target mutations, a concern for research...

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NextGEN CRISPR Genome Engineering -- Clean Genome Editing without Off Target Mutati - Video

Unusual Infectious Agents Virology Course Virus Lecture #23
Today learn more about the minimal genome size for an infectious agent. Could an infectious agent have no genome? We consider these questions with a discussion of viroids, which encode no proteins,...

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Unusual Infectious Agents Virology Course Virus Lecture #23 - Video

Types of Viral Genome Virology Course Virus Lecture #03
The Types of Viral Genome, Genomes and genetics. This is what you will learn in this virology lesson. Also have a look at the other parts of the virology course, and thanks for watching. This...

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Types of Viral Genome Virology Course Virus Lecture #03 - Video

May 12, 2014

DOE/Joint Genome Institute

Despite its name, the Dead Sea does support life, and not just in the sense of helping visitors float in its waters. Algae, bacteria, and fungi make up the limited number of species that can tolerate the extremely salty environment at the lowest point on Earth.

Some organisms thrive in salty environments by lying dormant when salt concentrations are very high. Other organisms need salt to grow. To learn which survival strategy the filamentous fungus Eurotium rubrum uses, a team of researchers led by Eviatar Nevo from the University of Haifa in Israel, Igor Grigoriev of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), and Gerhard Rambold, University of Bayreuth, Germany and their colleagues studied its genome. They described their findings in the May 9, 2014 issue of Nature Communications.

Understanding the long-term adaptation of cells and organisms to high salinity is of great importance in a world with increasing desertification and salinity, the team wrote. The observed functional and structural adaptations provide new insight into the mechanisms that help organisms to survive under such extreme environmental conditions, but also point to new targets like the biotechnological improvement of salt tolerance in crops. In principle this discovery could revolutionize saline agriculture worldwide by laying the groundwork of understanding necessary to appropriately using salt resistance genes and gene networks in crops to enable them to grow in desert and saline environments.

The DOE JGI team first sequenced, assembled and annotated the 26.2-million base genome of E. rubrum. The team found that the genome contained just over 10,000 predicted genes. They also found that the E. rubrum proteins had higher aspartic and glutamic acid amino acid levels than expected. When the team compared E. rubrums gene families against those in two other halophilic species (Wallemia ichthyophaga and Hortaea werneckii), they found that high acidic residues were common in all three species, a general trait all salt-tolerant microbes share.

To learn more about the fungus tolerance for salt, Tami Kis Papo at the University of Haifa grew samples in liquid and solid media at salinities from zero up to 90 percent of Dead Sea water. The researchers found that it had viable spores when grown in 70 percent diluted Dead Sea water, conditions equivalent to an algal bloom in the Dead Sea 20 years ago. A study conducted by Alfons R. Weig at the University of Bayreuth of E. rubrums transcriptome, that small fraction of the genome that encodes the RNA molecules in order to carry out instructions to build and maintain cells, showed that in high salinity conditions, the fungal cells need to keep cell membrane transport under tight control. This clearly indicates that the fungus tries to cope actively with its extreme environment and does not simply fall into dormancy, the team noted, as might be expected by the greatly reduced growth rates.

In addition to contributing to a better understanding of salt tolerance mechanisms for agriculture, this work may also have applicability to the DOEs interests in developing new strategies to improve biofuels production. For instance, the DOE JGI and its partners are sourcing microbial and fungal enzymes for more effective biomass pretreatment with ionic liquids, environmentally benign organic salts often used as green chemistry substitutes for volatile organic solvents.

Source: DOE/Joint Genome Institute

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Tolerance Lessons From A Dead Sea Fungus

Rapid Genome Sequencing, Interpretation Management in the Neonatal ICU: Euan Ashley, PMWC

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Rapid Genome Sequencing, Interpretation & Management in the Neonatal ICU: Euan Ashley, PMWC - Video

STI Genome Exhaust with new resonator on Subaru Forester SG

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STI Genome Exhaust with new resonator on Subaru Forester SG - Video

Horizon Miracle Cure A Decade of the Human Genome full movie part 1
http://tinyurl.com/6cftlqe Horizon Miracle Cure A Decade of the Human Genome Part 1 Full Movie, Horizon Miracle Cure A Decade of the Human Genome Part 1 Movi...

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Horizon Miracle Cure A Decade of the Human Genome full movie part 1 - Video

Good Morning Genome
At Klick Health, the incredible work we produce is a result of the top notch talent we employ. Genome is the operating system that enables our talent to perf...

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Good Morning Genome - Video

Edico Genome Interview with Dr. Eric Topol and Pieter van Rooyen
Dr Eric Topol, Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, chats with Pieter van Rooyen, Founder and CEO of Edico Genome.

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Edico Genome Interview with Dr. Eric Topol and Pieter van Rooyen - Video