Comparative analysis of recently sequenced eukaryotic genomes has uncovered extensive variation in transposable element (TE) abundance, diversity, and distribution. The TE profile in the sequenced pufferfish genomes is more similar to that of Drosophila melanogaster than to human or mouse, in that pufferfish TEs exhibit low overall abundance, high family diversity, and localization in the heter...

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a highly potent neurotoxin that selectively binds to the outer vestibule of voltage-gated sodium channels. Pufferfishes accumulate extremely high concentrations of TTX without any adverse effect. A nonaromatic amino acid (Asn) residue present in domain I of the pufferfish, Takifugu pardalis, Na v1.4 channel has been implicated in the TTX resistance of pufferfishes . Howeve...

Background: The high degree of sequence conservation between coding regions in fish and mammals can be exploited to identify genes in mammalian genomes by comparison with the sequence of similar genes in fish. Conversely, experimentally characterized mammalian genes may be used to annotate fish genomes. However, gene families that escape this principle include the rapidly diverging cytokines th...

Title Occurrence of paralytic shellfish toxins in Cambodian Mekong pufferfish Tetraodon turgidus: selective toxin accumulation in the skin. Author(s) Ngy, Laymithuna; Tada, Kenji; Yu, Chun-Fai; Takatani, Tomohiro; Arakawa, Osamu Citation Toxicon, 51(2), pp.280-288; 2008 Issue Date 2008-02 URL http://hdl.handle.net/10069/22351 Right Copyright © 2007 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. NAOSITE: Nag...

The stress response involves complex physiological mechanisms that maximize behavioral efficacy during attack or defense and is highly conserved in all vertebrates. Key mediators of the stress response are pituitary hormones encoded by the proopiomelanocortin gene (POMC). Despite conservation of physiological function and expression pattern of POMC in all vertebrates, phylogenetic footprinting ...

MOTIVATION The accumulation of genome sequences will only accelerate in the coming years. We aim to use this abundance of data to improve the quality of genomic alignments and devise a method which is capable of detecting regions evolving under weak or no evolutionary constraints. RESULTS We describe a genome alignment program AuberGene, which explores the idea of transitivity of local alignm...