While transposons have traditionally been viewed as genomic parasites or "junk DNA," the discovery of transposon-derived host genes has fueled an ongoing debate over the evolutionary role of transposons. In particular, while mobility-related open reading frames have been known to acquire host functions, the contribution of these types of events to the evolution of genes is not well understood. ...

Effective aminopyralid herbicides are commonly used to control broadleaf weeds in cereals or pastures, but their residues straw manure may damage cultivated crops and reduce the yield. In our experiments, response of tomato plants at doses 0.6, 1.5, 3, 7.5, 15 g/ha was evaluated, extracts from treated with herbicide Mustang Forte were tested. As concentration increased, seed germination delayed...

With the immense growth in the number of available protein structures, fast and accurate structure comparison has been essential. We propose an efficient method for structure comparison, based on a structural alphabet. Protein Blocks (PBs) is a widely used structural alphabet with 16 pentapeptide conformations that can fairly approximate a complete protein chain. Thus a 3D structure can be tran...

Short half-life is one of the key challenges in the field of therapeutic peptides. Various studies have reported enhancement in the stability of peptides using methods like chemical modifications, D-amino acid substitution, cyclization, replacement of labile aminos acids, etc. In order to study this scattered data, there is a pressing need for a repository dedicated to the half-life of peptides...

Comparison of multiple protein structures has a broad range of applications in the analysis of protein structure, function and evolution. Multiple structure alignment tools (MSTAs) are necessary to obtain a simultaneous comparison of a family of related folds. In this study, we have developed a method for multiple structure comparison largely based on sequence alignment techniques. A widely use...