Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Cape Town, Private Bag 1, Rondebosch, 7701, Cape Town, South Africa
Correspondence Paul R. Meyers pmeyers{at}science.uct.ac.za
An actinomycete ...with blue aerial mycelium and yellow substrate mycelium was isolated from a suburban soil sample collected in Cape Town, South Africa and named strain CPJVR-H T . The colour of the substrate mycelium was not sensitive to changes in pH. The organism produced spiny spores in Spirales spore chains. Chemical taxonomy indicated that it is a member of the genus Streptomyces . Strain CPJVR-H T grew at 45 °C and did not produce melanin or any diffusible pigments. It exhibited weak antibacterial activity against a clinical isolate of Enterococcus faecium , but no antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 or Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853. Analysis of its 16S rRNA gene sequence, DNADNA hybridization studies and the results of physiological tests showed that this strain represents a novel species of Streptomyces , for which the name Streptomyces africanus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is CPJVR-H T (=NRRL B-24143 T =DSM 41829 T ).
Abbreviations: DAP, diaminopimelic acid; ISP, International Streptomyces Project
Published online ahead of print on 13 February 2004 as DOI 10.1099/ijs.0.02738-0.
The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of Streptomyces africanus CPJVR-H T is AY208912 .
The genetic changes underlying the initial steps of animal domestication are still poorly understood. We generated a high-quality reference genome for the rabbit and compared it to resequencing data ...from populations of wild and domestic rabbits. We identified more than 100 selective sweeps specific to domestic rabbits but only a relatively small number of fixed (or nearly fixed) single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for derived alleles. SNPs with marked allele frequency differences between wild and domestic rabbits were enriched for conserved noncoding sites. Enrichment analyses suggest that genes affecting brain and neuronal development have often been targeted during domestication. We propose that because of a truly complex genetic background, tame behavior in rabbits and other domestic animals evolved by shifts in allele frequencies at many loci, rather than by critical changes at only a few domestication loci.
Gibbons are small arboreal apes that display an accelerated rate of evolutionary chromosomal rearrangement and occupy a key node in the primate phylogeny between Old World monkeys and great apes. ...Here we present the assembly and analysis of a northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys) genome. We describe the propensity for a gibbon-specific retrotransposon (LAVA) to insert into chromosome segregation genes and alter transcription by providing a premature termination site, suggesting a possible molecular mechanism for the genome plasticity of the gibbon lineage. We further show that the gibbon genera (Nomascus, Hylobates, Hoolock and Symphalangus) experienced a near-instantaneous radiation ∼5 million years ago, coincident with major geographical changes in southeast Asia that caused cycles of habitat compression and expansion. Finally, we identify signatures of positive selection in genes important for forelimb development (TBX5) and connective tissues (COL1A1) that may have been involved in the adaptation of gibbons to their arboreal habitat.
Abstract
Background
The domestic pig (Sus scrofa) is important both as a food source and as a biomedical model given its similarity in size, anatomy, physiology, metabolism, pathology, and ...pharmacology to humans. The draft reference genome (Sscrofa10.2) of a purebred Duroc female pig established using older clone-based sequencing methods was incomplete, and unresolved redundancies, short-range order and orientation errors, and associated misassembled genes limited its utility.
Results
We present 2 annotated highly contiguous chromosome-level genome assemblies created with more recent long-read technologies and a whole-genome shotgun strategy, 1 for the same Duroc female (Sscrofa11.1) and 1 for an outbred, composite-breed male (USMARCv1.0). Both assemblies are of substantially higher (>90-fold) continuity and accuracy than Sscrofa10.2.
Conclusions
These highly contiguous assemblies plus annotation of a further 11 short-read assemblies provide an unprecedented view of the genetic make-up of this important agricultural and biomedical model species. We propose that the improved Duroc assembly (Sscrofa11.1) become the reference genome for genomic research in pigs.
Effective use of the human and mouse genomes requires reliable identification of genes and their products. Although multiple public resources provide annotation, different methods are used that can ...result in similar but not identical representation of genes, transcripts, and proteins. The collaborative consensus coding sequence (CCDS) project tracks identical protein annotations on the reference mouse and human genomes with a stable identifier (CCDS ID), and ensures that they are consistently represented on the NCBI, Ensembl, and UCSC Genome Browsers. Importantly, the project coordinates on manually reviewing inconsistent protein annotations between sites, as well as annotations for which new evidence suggests a revision is needed, to progressively converge on a complete protein-coding set for the human and mouse reference genomes, while maintaining a high standard of reliability and biological accuracy. To date, the project has identified 20,159 human and 17,707 mouse consensus coding regions from 17,052 human and 16,893 mouse genes. Three evaluation methods indicate that the entries in the CCDS set are highly likely to represent real proteins, more so than annotations from contributing groups not included in CCDS. The CCDS database thus centralizes the function of identifying well-supported, identically-annotated, protein-coding regions.
The Consensus Coding Sequence (CCDS) project (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CCDS/) is a collaborative effort to maintain a dataset of protein-coding regions that are identically annotated on the human ...and mouse reference genome assemblies by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and Ensembl genome annotation pipelines. Identical annotations that pass quality assurance tests are tracked with a stable identifier (CCDS ID). Members of the collaboration, who are from NCBI, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of California Santa Cruz, provide coordinated and continuous review of the dataset to ensure high-quality CCDS representations. We describe here the current status and recent growth in the CCDS dataset, as well as recent changes to the CCDS web and FTP sites. These changes include more explicit reporting about the NCBI and Ensembl annotation releases being compared, new search and display options, the addition of biologically descriptive information and our approach to representing genes for which support evidence is incomplete. We also present a summary of recent and future curation targets.
The Consensus Coding Sequence (CCDS) collaboration involves curators at multiple centers with a goal of producing a conservative set of high quality, protein-coding region annotations for the human ...and mouse reference genome assemblies. The CCDS data set reflects a 'gold standard' definition of best supported protein annotations, and corresponding genes, which pass a standard series of quality assurance checks and are supported by manual curation. This data set supports use of genome annotation information by human and mouse researchers for effective experimental design, analysis and interpretation. The CCDS project consists of analysis of automated whole-genome annotation builds to identify identical CDS annotations, quality assurance testing and manual curation support. Identical CDS annotations are tracked with a CCDS identifier (ID) and any future change to the annotated CDS structure must be agreed upon by the collaborating members. CCDS curation guidelines were developed to address some aspects of curation in order to improve initial annotation consistency and to reduce time spent in discussing proposed annotation updates. Here, we present the current status of the CCDS database and details on our procedures to track and coordinate our efforts. We also present the relevant background and reasoning behind the curation standards that we have developed for CCDS database treatment of transcripts that are nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) candidates, for transcripts containing upstream open reading frames, for identifying the most likely translation start codons and for the annotation of readthrough transcripts. Examples are provided to illustrate the application of these guidelines. DATABASE URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CCDS/CcdsBrowse.cgi.
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