Current Genomics - Volume 17, Issue 6, 2016

In the post-genomic era, increasingly sophisticated genetic tools are being developed with the long-term goal of understanding how the coordinated activity of genes gives rise to a complex organism. With the advent of the next generation sequencing associated with effective computational approaches, wide variety of plant species have been fully sequenced giving a wealth of data sequence information on str Read More

Understanding the fundamental nature of a molecular process or a biological pathway is often a catalyst for the development of new technologies in biology. Indeed, studies from late 1990s to early 2000s have uncovered multiple overlapping but functionally distinct RNA silencing pathways in plants, including the posttranscriptional microRNA and small interfering RNA pathways and the transcriptional RNA-directed DNA methyl Read More

Plants are continuously exposed to various abiotic and biotic factors limiting their growth and reproduction. In response, they need various sophisticated ways to adapt to adverse environmental conditions without compromising their proper development, reproductive success and eventually survival. This requires an intricate network to regulate gene expression at transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, inclu Read More

Mutagenesis can be random or targeted and occur by nature or artificially by humans. However, the bulk of mutagenesis employed in plants are random and caused by physical agents such as x-ray and gamma-ray or chemicals such as ethyl-methane sulfonate (EMS). Researchers are interested in first identifying these mutations and/or polymorphisms in the genome followed by investigating their effects in the plant fun Read More

In recent years, the genomic sequence of numerous plant species including the main crop species has been determined. Computational tools have been developed to deal with the issue of which plant has been sequenced and where is the sequence hosted. In this mini-review, the databases for genome projects, the databases created to host species/clade projects and the databases developed to perform plant comparative gen Read More

The extent of our knowledge on the number of chemical compounds related to anthropogenic activities that can cause damage to the environment and to organisms is increasing. Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are one group of potentially hazardous substances that include natural and synthetic chemicals and have the ability to mimic endogenous hormones, interfering with their biosynthesis, metabolism, and normal fu Read More

Background: DNA methyltransferase-3B (DNMT3B) plays a key role in establishment and maintenance of genomic methylation patterns. Polymorphism in promoter region -149 C>T (C46359T) of DNMT3B gene may alter DNMT3B activity which leads to increased susceptibility to cancer. Inconsistent results regarding this have been reported in a number of studies. Objective: To carry out a meta-analysis of the stu Read More