Department of Biochemistry and Functional Genomics, Faculté de médecine et des sciences de la santé, Université de Sherbrooke, QC J1E 4K8, Canada.
Department of Computer Science, Faculté des sciences, Université de Sherbrooke, QC J1K 2R1, Canada.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2023 Jan 6;51(D1):D135-D140. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkac657.
G-quadruplexes (G4) are 3D structures that are found in both DNA and RNA. Interest in this structure has grown over the past few years due to both its implication in diverse biological mechanisms and its potential use as a therapeutic target, to name two examples. G4s in humans have been widely studied; however, the level of their study in other species remains relatively minimal. That said, progress in this field has resulted in the prediction of G4s structures in various species, ranging from bacteria to eukaryotes. These predictions were analysed in a previous study which revealed that G4s are present in all living kingdoms. To date, eleven different databases have grouped the various G4s depending on either their structures, on the proteins that might bind them, or on their location in the various genomes. However, none of these databases contains information on their location in the transcriptome of many of the implicated species. The GAIA database was designed so as to make this data available online in a user-friendly manner. Through its web interface, users can query GAIA to filter G4s, which, we hope, will help the research in this field. GAIA is available at: https://gaia.cobius.usherbrooke.ca.
四链体（G4）是存在于 DNA 和 RNA 中的 3D 结构。由于其在多种生物机制中的作用以及作为治疗靶点的潜在用途，近年来人们对这种结构的兴趣日益浓厚。人类中的 G4 已经得到了广泛的研究；然而，其他物种中对其的研究水平仍然相对较低。尽管如此，这一领域的进展已经导致了对各种物种中 G4 结构的预测，从细菌到真核生物。在之前的一项研究中对这些预测进行了分析，该研究表明 G4 存在于所有生命王国中。迄今为止，已有十一个不同的数据库根据 G4 的结构、可能与其结合的蛋白质或其在各种基因组中的位置对其进行了分类。然而，这些数据库中都没有包含有关它们在许多涉及物种转录组中的位置的信息。GAIA 数据库的设计目的是以便以用户友好的方式在线提供这些数据。通过其网络界面，用户可以查询 GAIA 来筛选 G4，我们希望这将有助于该领域的研究。GAIA 可在以下网址获取：https://gaia.cobius.usherbrooke.ca。
