Hunting for new restriction enzymes in GenBank
- New England Biolabs, Inc., Beverly, MA (United States)
Restriction enzyme genes are hard to identify unless their surrounding sequences are available. This is because the best definition of a restriction enzyme gene is an open reading frame, that looks like nothing else in GenBank, but lies close to a DNA methylase gene. There are other clues too, such as nearby reading frames that code control proteins or the DNA specificity subunits of Type I restriction enzymes. We are developing software that searches the daily updates of GenBank to find candidate restriction enzyme genes. This is being followed by bench experiments to see of the predictions are correct. More than 50 potential new restriction enzymes have been predicted and it is quite remarkable that the density of restriction enzyme genes in microbial DNA is greater than one system per 200 Kb. The software development is emphasizing the graphic presentation of the search results. The approach could be used for other situations where a molecular biologist is interested to find new examples of their favorite genes.
- Research Organization:
- Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY (United States); Sloan (Alfred P.) Foundation, New York, NY (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 549021
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970137-; TRN: 97:005298-0033
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: RECOMB `97: 1. annual conference on research in computational molecular biology, Santa Fe, NM (United States), 20-22 Jan 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of RECOMB 97. Proceedings of the first annual international conference on computational molecular biology; PB: 370 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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