Intrinsically disordered protein regions are abundant in eukaryotic proteins and lack stable tertiary structures and enzymatic functions. Previous studies of disordered region evolution based on interspecific alignments have revealed an increased propensity for indels and rapid rates of amino acid substitution. How disordered regions are maintained at high abundance in the proteome and across t...

BACKGROUND In the process of protein evolution, sequence variations within protein families can cause changes in protein structures and functions. However, structures tend to be more conserved than sequences and functions. This leads to an intriguing question: what is the evolutionary mechanism by which sequence variations produce structural changes? To investigate this question, we focused on ...

The oil palm is a tropical oil bearing tree. Recently EST-derived SNPs and SSRs are a free by-product of the currently expanding EST (Expressed Sequence Tag) data bases. The development of high-throughput methods for the detection of SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) and small indels (insertion / deletion) has led to a revolution in their use as molecular markers. Available (5452) Oil palm ...

Small insertions and deletions (indels) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are common genetic variants that are thought to be associated with a wide variety of human diseases. Owing to the genome's size and complexity, manually characterizing each one of these variations in an individual is not practical. While significant progress has been made in automated single-base mutation discove...

Molecular breeding approaches are of growing importance to crop improvement. However, closely related cultivars generally used for crossing material lack sufficient known DNA polymorphisms due to their genetic relatedness. Next-generation sequencing allows the identification of a massive number of DNA polymorphisms such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertions-deletions (InDels)...

Indels are increasingly used in phylogenetics and play a major role in genome size evolution, and yet both the phylogenetic information content of indels and their evolutionary significance remain to be better assessed. Using three presumably independently evolving nuclear gene fragments (28S rDNA, β-fibrinogen, ornithine decarboxylase) from 29 families of neognathous birds, we have obtained a ...

BACKGROUND Leprosy is an insidious infectious disease caused by the obligate intracellular bacteria Mycobacterium leprae, and host genetic factors can modulate the immune response and generate distinct categories of leprosy susceptibility that are also influenced by genetic ancestry. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We investigated the possible effects of CYP19A1 [rs11575899], NFKβ1 [rs28362491...