Research Report 2010 - MDC

Phylogeny of cellulase genes from P. pacificus and plant parasitic nematodes. The phylogeny of cellulases indicates that plant parasitic nematodes(green) and P. pacificus (red) have acquired cellulases independently by horizontal gene transfer. The circular phylogram and branch length estimates(expected number of amino acid substitutions) are based on a multiple alignment of the conserved region (70 amino acids) around the C-terminalactive site. Only nematode cellulases with >10% sequence divergence are shown. Additionally, best non-nematode protein matches to P.pacificus cellulases are shown.evolution. We detect sequence variation from highthroughputsequencing approaches and predict potentialeffects on the phenotype with expressive graphicalmodels.Selected PublicationsDieterich, C. & Sommer, R. J. (2009), ‘How to become a parasite – lessonsfrom the genomes of nematodes.’, Trends Genet 25(5), 203-209.Roeseler, W.; Tian, H.; Witte, H.; Yang, S.-P.; Wilson, R. K. & Sommer, R. J.(2008), ‘The Pristionchus pacificus genome provides a unique perspectiveon nematode lifestyle and parasitism.’, Nat Genet 40(10), 1193-1198.Rödelsperger, C. & Dieterich, C. (2008), ‘Syntenator: Multiple gene orderalignments with a gene-specific scoring function.’, Algorithms MolBiol 3, 14.Dieterich, C. & Sommer, R. J. (2008), ‘A Caenorhabditis motif compendiumfor studying transcriptional gene regulation.’, BMC Genomics 9, 30.Dieterich, C.; Clifton, S. W.; Schuster, L. N.; Chinwalla, A.; Delehaunty, K.;Dinkelacker, I.; Fulton, L.; Fulton, R.; Godfrey, J.; Minx, P.; Mitreva, M.;Berlin Institute of Medical Systems Biology 199