Genomic insights into the Ixodes scapularis tick vector of Lyme disease.

Ticks transmit more pathogens to humans and animals than any other arthropod. We describe the 2.1 Gbp nuclear genome of the tick, Ixodes scapularis (Say), which vectors pathogens that cause Lyme disease, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, babesiosis and other diseases. The large genome reflects accumulation of repetitive DNA, new lineages of retro-transposons, and gene architecture patterns resembling ancient metazoans rather than pancrustaceans. Annotation of scaffolds representing ∼57% of the genome, reveals 20,486 protein-coding genes and expansions of gene families associated with tick-host interactions. We report insights from genome analyses into parasitic processes unique to ticks, including host 'questing', prolonged feeding, cuticle synthesis, blood meal concentration, novel methods of haemoglobin digestion, haem detoxification, vitellogenesis and prolonged off-host survival. We identify proteins associated with the agent of human granulocytic anaplasmosis, an emerging disease, and the encephalitis-causing Langat virus, and a population structure correlated to life-history traits and transmission of the Lyme disease agent.

Complex patterns of genomic admixture within southern Africa.

Within-population genetic diversity is greatest within Africa, while between-population genetic diversity is directly proportional to geographic distance. The most divergent contemporary human populations include the click-speaking forager peoples of southern Africa, broadly defined as Khoesan. Both intra- (Bantu expansion) and inter-continental migration (European-driven colonization) have resulted in complex patterns of admixture between ancient geographically isolated Khoesan and more recently diverged populations. Using gender-specific analysis and almost 1 million autosomal markers, we determine the significance of estimated ancestral contributions that have shaped five contemporary southern African populations in a cohort of 103 individuals. Limited by lack of available data for homogenous Khoesan representation, we identify the Ju/'hoan (n = 19) as a distinct early diverging human lineage with little to no significant non-Khoesan contribution. In contrast to the Ju/'hoan, we identify ancient signatures of Khoesan and Bantu unions resulting in significant Khoesan- and Bantu-derived contributions to the Southern Bantu amaXhosa (n = 15) and Khoesan !Xun (n = 14), respectively. Our data further suggests that contemporary !Xun represent distinct Khoesan prehistories. Khoesan assimilation with European settlement at the most southern tip of Africa resulted in significant ancestral Khoesan contributions to the Coloured (n = 25) and Baster (n = 30) populations. The latter populations were further impacted by 170 years of East Indian slave trade and intra-continental migrations resulting in a complex pattern of genetic variation (admixture). The populations of southern Africa provide a unique opportunity to investigate the genomic variability from some of the oldest human lineages to the implications of complex admixture patterns including ancient and recently diverged human lineages.

Protein interaction data curation: the International Molecular Exchange (IMEx) consortium.

The International Molecular Exchange (IMEx) consortium is an international collaboration between major public interaction data providers to share literature-curation efforts and make a nonredundant set of protein interactions available in a single search interface on a common website (http://www.imexconsortium.org/). Common curation rules have been developed, and a central registry is used to manage the selection of articles to enter into the dataset. We discuss the advantages of such a service to the user, our quality-control measures and our data-distribution practices.

Meeting report: a workshop on Best Practices in Genome Annotation.

Efforts to annotate the genomes of a wide variety of model organisms are currently carried out by sequencing centers, model organism databases and academic/institutional laboratories around the world. Different annotation methods and tools have been developed over time to meet the needs of biologists faced with the task of annotating biological data. While standardized methods are essential for consistent curation within each annotation group, methods and tools can differ between groups, especially when the groups are curating different organisms. Biocurators from several institutes met at the Third International Biocuration Conference in Berlin, Germany, April 2009 and hosted the 'Best Practices in Genome Annotation: Inference from Evidence' workshop to share their strategies, pipelines, standards and tools. This article documents the material presented in the workshop.

Genome sequence of Aedes aegypti, a major arbovirus vector.

We present a draft sequence of the genome of Aedes aegypti, the primary vector for yellow fever and dengue fever, which at approximately 1376 million base pairs is about 5 times the size of the genome of the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. Nearly 50% of the Ae. aegypti genome consists of transposable elements. These contribute to a factor of approximately 4 to 6 increase in average gene length and in sizes of intergenic regions relative to An. gambiae and Drosophila melanogaster. Nonetheless, chromosomal synteny is generally maintained among all three insects, although conservation of orthologous gene order is higher (by a factor of approximately 2) between the mosquito species than between either of them and the fruit fly. An increase in genes encoding odorant binding, cytochrome P450, and cuticle domains relative to An. gambiae suggests that members of these protein families underpin some of the biological differences between the two mosquito species.

Complete reannotation of the Arabidopsis genome: methods, tools, protocols and the final release.

BACKGROUND: Since the initial publication of its complete genome sequence, Arabidopsis thaliana has become more important than ever as a model for plant research. However, the initial genome annotation was submitted by multiple centers using inconsistent methods, making the data difficult to use for many applications. RESULTS: Over the course of three years, TIGR has completed its effort to standardize the structural and functional annotation of the Arabidopsis genome. Using both manual and automated methods, Arabidopsis gene structures were refined and gene products were renamed and assigned to Gene Ontology categories. We present an overview of the methods employed, tools developed, and protocols followed, summarizing the contents of each data release with special emphasis on our final annotation release (version 5). CONCLUSION: Over the entire period, several thousand new genes and pseudogenes were added to the annotation. Approximately one third of the originally annotated gene models were significantly refined yielding improved gene structure annotations, and every protein-coding gene was manually inspected and classified using Gene Ontology terms.

Improving the Arabidopsis genome annotation using maximal transcript alignment assemblies.

The spliced alignment of expressed sequence data to genomic sequence has proven a key tool in the comprehensive annotation of genes in eukaryotic genomes. A novel algorithm was developed to assemble clusters of overlapping transcript alignments (ESTs and full-length cDNAs) into maximal alignment assemblies, thereby comprehensively incorporating all available transcript data and capturing subtle splicing variations. Complete and partial gene structures identified by this method were used to improve The Institute for Genomic Research Arabidopsis genome annotation (TIGR release v.4.0). The alignment assemblies permitted the automated modeling of several novel genes and >1000 alternative splicing variations as well as updates (including UTR annotations) to nearly half of the approximately 27 000 annotated protein coding genes. The algorithm of the Program to Assemble Spliced Alignments (PASA) tool is described, as well as the results of automated updates to Arabidopsis gene annotations.