Galperin M Y
National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA.
Comp Funct Genomics. 2001;2(1):14-8. doi: 10.1002/cfg.66.
Conserved hypothetical proteins, i.e. conserved proteins whose functions are still unknown, pose a challenge not just to functional genomics but also to general biology. For many conserved proteins, computational analysis provides only a general prediction of biochemical function; their exact biological functions have to be established through direct experimentation. In the few cases when this has been accomplished, the results were remarkable, revealing the deoxyxylulose pathway and a new essential enzyme, the ITP pyrophosphatase. Comparative genome analysis is also instrumental in illuminating unsolved problems in biology, e.g. the mechanism of FtsZ-independent cell division in Chlamydia, Ureaplasma and Aeropyrum or the role of uncharacterized conserved domains in signal transduction.
保守的假设性蛋白质,即功能仍未知的保守蛋白质,不仅对功能基因组学,而且对普通生物学都构成了挑战。对于许多保守蛋白质,计算分析仅提供对生化功能的一般预测;它们的确切生物学功能必须通过直接实验来确定。在少数完成了这一工作的情况下,结果非常显著,揭示了脱氧木酮糖途径和一种新的必需酶——ITP焦磷酸酶。比较基因组分析在阐明生物学中未解决的问题方面也很有帮助,例如衣原体、脲原体和气火菌中不依赖FtsZ的细胞分裂机制,或信号转导中未表征的保守结构域的作用。