Division of Chromatin Networks, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) & Bioquant, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany.
BMC Genet. 2018 May 18;19(1):32. doi: 10.1186/s12863-018-0617-8.
The ends of linear chromosomes, the telomeres, comprise repetitive DNA sequences in complex with proteins that protects them from being processed by the DNA repair machinery. Cancer cells need to counteract the shortening of telomere repeats during replication for their unlimited proliferation by reactivating the reverse transcriptase telomerase or by using the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway. The different telomere maintenance (TM) mechanisms appear to involve hundreds of proteins but their telomere repeat length related activities are only partly understood. Currently, a database that integrates information on TM relevant genes is missing.
To provide a resource for studies that dissect TM features, we here introduce the TelNet database at http://www.cancertelsys.org/telnet/ . It offers a comprehensive compilation of more than 2000 human and 1100 yeast genes linked to telomere maintenance. These genes were annotated in terms of TM mechanism, associated specific functions and orthologous genes, a TM significance score and information from peer-reviewed literature. This TM information can be retrieved via different search and view modes and evaluated for a set of genes as demonstrated for an exemplary application.
TelNet supports the annotation of genes identified from bioinformatics analysis pipelines to reveal possible connections with TM networks. We anticipate that TelNet will be a helpful resource for researchers that study telomeres.
线性染色体的末端，即端粒，由重复的 DNA 序列与蛋白质复合物组成，这些蛋白质复合物可以保护端粒免受 DNA 修复机制的处理。癌细胞需要通过重新激活端粒酶（一种逆转录酶）或通过使用端粒的替代性延长（ALT）途径来抵消在复制过程中端粒重复序列缩短的问题，从而实现无限增殖。不同的端粒维持（TM）机制似乎涉及数百种蛋白质，但它们与端粒重复长度相关的活性仅部分被理解。目前，缺少一个整合与 TM 相关基因信息的数据库。
为了提供一个用于研究 TM 特征的资源，我们在此介绍 TelNet 数据库，网址为 http://www.cancertelsys.org/telnet/。它提供了一个综合超过 2000 个人类和 1100 个酵母基因的信息，这些基因与端粒维持有关。这些基因根据 TM 机制、相关特定功能和直系同源基因、TM 重要性评分以及来自同行评议文献的信息进行了注释。可以通过不同的搜索和查看模式检索 TM 信息，并可以对一组基因进行评估，我们以一个示例应用程序展示了如何进行评估。
TelNet 支持对从生物信息学分析管道中识别出的基因进行注释，以揭示与 TM 网络的可能联系。我们预计 TelNet 将成为研究端粒的研究人员的有用资源。
