4 - Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture

Nattonal Workshop-cum-Tra~ning on Bioinfam.ti& and Information Management in Aquaculture
Internet database resource:
htt~://www,meddb,info/index.~h~.encat=8
htt~://~~~.ebi.ac.uk/2can/da~ses/dna.html
htt~://www.ebi.ac.uk/2can/databases/aenomic.html
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/2can/databases/bib.html
3. Transcrlptomics
Expression of a biological trait in an organism is linked to the function of one or
combination of few genes. Alternatively, it may be said that genes express the
biological traits of humans, animals, plants and microorganisms. The acquisition
of new knowledge about genes will make it possible to identify, prevent or treat
disease in humans, animals and plants. Using new technology, it is possible to
study tens of thousands of genes at once. Thus it has become a realistic
objective to determine how the genes in an organism function. At the messenger
RNA level, above 5 million ESTs (expressed sequence tags) of the
complementary DNAs (cDNAs) of messenger RNAs have been sequenced in
humans. In plants, several millions have been sequenced in soyabean, maize,
tomato and Arabidopsis.. These sequences can be used to create high-density
filters, DNA chips or microarrays, where thousands of cDNAs are fixed on a small
surface, which is then hybridized with the mRNAs from a given stage or organ. It
can thus be answered which genes among thousands are expressed in a
particular cell type of an organism, at a particular time and stage. Such
transcriptomics tools will soon permit extensive study of transcription and its
regulation.
Database Resource:
1. htt~://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.aov/dbEST
2. http://www.ebi.ac.uk/2can/databases/microarray.html
4. Proteomics
Most genes code for and work through proteins. Proteins may have a wide
variety of functions in an organism. Thus it is of great significance to know how
proteins function. The complete profile of proteins expressed in a cell is called
the cell's proteome. There are thousands of different proteins in each individual
cell, and different types of cells contain different sets of proteins. The objective
of proteomics is to discover how these proteins function and interact with one
another. In order to determine the effect of proteins, it is necessary to know
their composition; i.e., the way in which their components are arranged. It is
also necessary to know the form that they take, i.e., their three-dimensional
structure. Most proteins are coiled in a particular way and can only fulfill their
function if they assume the correct three-dimensional structure. Techniques have
been developed for visual imaging of proteins, but determining protein structures
is technically demanding. Data have been stored for a couple of thousand
different protein structures in international databases, but the three-dimensional
structure for most of the proteins has not yet been determined. In many cases
only parts of these proteins' structures have been determined, perhaps only the
biologically active part.