Malays. Appl. Biol. (2015) 44(1): 161-165
IN SILICO CHARACTERISATION OF THE Glaciozyma antarctica GENOME: MINING THE MOLECULAR CHAPERONES
NUR ATHIRAH, Y.1, ABU BAKAR, F.D.1, ILLIAS, R.M.2, MAHADI, N.M.3 and MURAD, A.M.A.1*
1School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
2Department of Bioprocess Engineering, Faculty of Chemical and Natural Resources Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
3Malaysia Genome Institute, Jalan Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia
*email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
ABSTRACT
Glaciozyma antarctica is a psychrophilic yeast isolated from the Antarctic sea ice. In this study, we performed a de novo characterisation of molecular chaperones from G. antarctica genome datasets. A total of 7857 genes that code for various types of proteins have been predicted from the G. antarctica genome sequence. From these genes, we identified 89 possible molecular chaperones that matched known molecular chaperones from other organisms available in various databases such as Uniprot, Gene Ontology, cpnDB and NCBI. For an in-depth analysis of molecular functions, we used homologous clustering to transfer knowledge from unknown to known functions using Cluster Analysis of Sequences (CLAN) bioinformatics software. The results reveal 12 major groups of chaperones that contribute to the cold-adaptation mechanism through their molecular function, biological processes and cellular components. The findings lay the foundation for future functional genomics studies on this organism and shed light on how lower eukaryotic cells respond to low temperature.
Key words: Molecular chaperones, clustering analysis, functional genomics, Glaciozyma antarctica
