Browsing by Subject "Molecular sequence annotation"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Cloning, Annotation and Developmental Expression of the Chicken Intestinal MUC2 Gene
    (Public Library of Science, 2013) Jiang, Zhengyu; Applegate, Todd J.; Lossie, Amy C.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Intestinal mucin 2 (MUC2) encodes a heavily glycosylated, gel-forming mucin, which creates an important protective mucosal layer along the gastrointestinal tract in humans and other species. This first line of defense guards against attacks from microorganisms and is integral to the innate immune system. As a first step towards characterizing the innate immune response of MUC2 in different species, we report the cloning of a full-length, 11,359 bp chicken MUC2 cDNA, and describe the genomic organization and functional annotation of this complex, 74.5 kb locus. MUC2 contains 64 exons and demonstrates distinct spatiotemporal expression profiles throughout development in the gastrointestinal tract; expression increases with gestational age and from anterior to posterior along the gut. The chicken protein has a similar domain organization as the human orthologue, with a signal peptide and several von Willebrand domains in the N-terminus and the characteristic cystine knot at the C-terminus. The PTS domain of the chicken MUC2 protein spans ∼1600 amino acids and is interspersed with four CysD motifs. However, the PTS domain in the chicken diverges significantly from the human orthologue; although the chicken domain is shorter, the repetitive unit is 69 amino acids in length, which is three times longer than the human. The amino acid composition shows very little similarity to the human motif, which potentially contributes to differences in the innate immune response between species, as glycosylation across this rapidly evolving domain provides much of the musical barrier. Future studies of the function of MUC2 in the innate immune response system in chicken could provide an important model organism to increase our understanding of the biological significance of MUC2 in host defense and highlight the potential of the chicken for creating new immune-based therapies.
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    FAVOR: functional annotation of variants online resource and annotator for variation across the human genome
    (Oxford University Press, 2023) Zhou, Hufeng; Arapoglou, Theodore; Li, Xihao; Li, Zilin; Zheng, Xiuwen; Moore, Jill; Asok, Abhijith; Kumar, Sushant; Blue, Elizabeth E.; Buyske, Steven; Cox, Nancy; Felsenfeld, Adam; Gerstein, Mark; Kenny, Eimear; Li, Bingshan; Matise, Tara; Philippakis, Anthony; Rehm, Heidi L.; Sofia, Heidi J.; Snyder, Grace; NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program Variant Functional Annotation Working Group; Weng, Zhiping; Neale, Benjamin; Sunyaev, Shamil R.; Lin, Xihong; Biostatistics, School of Public Health
    Large biobank-scale whole genome sequencing (WGS) studies are rapidly identifying a multitude of coding and non-coding variants. They provide an unprecedented resource for illuminating the genetic basis of human diseases. Variant functional annotations play a critical role in WGS analysis, result interpretation, and prioritization of disease- or trait-associated causal variants. Existing functional annotation databases have limited scope to perform online queries and functionally annotate the genotype data of large biobank-scale WGS studies. We develop the Functional Annotation of Variants Online Resources (FAVOR) to meet these pressing needs. FAVOR provides a comprehensive multi-faceted variant functional annotation online portal that summarizes and visualizes findings of all possible nine billion single nucleotide variants (SNVs) across the genome. It allows for rapid variant-, gene- and region-level queries of variant functional annotations. FAVOR integrates variant functional information from multiple sources to describe the functional characteristics of variants and facilitates prioritizing plausible causal variants influencing human phenotypes. Furthermore, we provide a scalable annotation tool, FAVORannotator, to functionally annotate large-scale WGS studies and efficiently store the genotype and their variant functional annotation data in a single file using the annotated Genomic Data Structure (aGDS) format, making downstream analysis more convenient. FAVOR and FAVORannotator are available at https://favor.genohub.org.