Lee Yong-Seok, Kim Tae-Hyung, Choi Sun-Lim, Lee Sunghoon, Bhak Jong, Kaang Bong-Kiun
National Creative Research Initiative Center for Memory and Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Department of Biological Sciences; College of Natural Sciences; Seoul National University; Gwanak-gu, Seoul Korea.
Commun Integr Biol. 2009 Jul;2(4):321-3. doi: 10.4161/cib.2.4.8334.
The sea hare Aplysia is a powerful model organism for studying the structure and function of the nervous system. Recently, the genomic characterization of Aplysia has been facilitated: A large scale EST sequences was acquired by sequencing cDNA libraries from A. californica and a parallel EST database of the closely related species A. kurodai was reported. These EST databases provide useful tools for both molecular biology and bioinformatics. In our previous report, we demonstrated the utility of the database by screening the candidate genes for the synaptic plasticity and the behavioral sensitization using the microarray containing A. kurodai ESTs. In this addendum, we have expanded our study to show that the protein domain repertoire and the abundance of regulatory genes displayed a linear relationship with the evolution of the complex brains in different lineages. This distinct set of protein domains may play critical roles in evolution of the nervous systems.
海兔是研究神经系统结构和功能的一种强大的模式生物。最近,海兔的基因组特征研究得到了促进:通过对加州海兔cDNA文库进行测序获得了大规模EST序列,并且报道了近缘物种黑田海兔的平行EST数据库。这些EST数据库为分子生物学和生物信息学提供了有用的工具。在我们之前的报告中,我们通过使用包含黑田海兔ESTs的微阵列筛选突触可塑性和行为敏感化的候选基因,证明了该数据库的实用性。在本附录中,我们扩展了研究,以表明蛋白质结构域组成和调控基因的丰度与不同谱系中复杂大脑的进化呈线性关系。这一独特的蛋白质结构域集合可能在神经系统的进化中起关键作用。