From: ncbi-seminar-admin@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov on behalf of Anastasia
Nikolskaya [nikolska@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 9:21 AM
To: ncbi-seminar@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Subject: Seminar reminder - David Sherman, 3 pm today

Bldg. 38A, 5th floor conference room
Thursday April 11, 3 PM

The Genolevures genomics project

David J. Sherman
Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique
Universite de Bordeaux

The Genolevures genomics project is a large-scale comparison between S.
cerevisiae and thirteen other yeast species of the various branches of the
Hemiascomycetous class, conducted by seven French laboratories (Genoscope,
Pasteur Institute, INRA INA-PG, Bordeaux, Lyon, Orsay, and Strasbourg) and now
financed by the CNRS. We generated a large set of novel data (50 mbp) by
sequencing random genomic libraries from these species, and performed a
complete manual annotation by means of exhaustive Blastx comparisons with
S.cerevisiae and a collection of complet e proteomes. Results (21 articles)
were published in a special issue of FEBS Letters.

My talk would first address some of the biological conclusions of this
study. Of the more interesting are: a model of molecular evolution in the
Hemiascomycetes based on the reiteration of chromosome segment duplication,
that creates transient merodiploids that are subsequently resolved by gene
deletion events; identification of 1892 ascomycetes-specific genes (half of
which are already functionally characterized by S.cerevisiae) plus a total
of some 20000 new genes among the thirteen species; and a degree of gene
redundancy conserved across species that argues for a dynamic equilibrium
of numerous duplication and deletion events rather than a massive duplicati= on
occuring in some branches but not others.

I would also present the practical issues of designing and organizing a
genomics database for large-scale genome comparison and the user-oriented
services that that entails. This work was performed under my responsibility
in the Center for Bioinformatics at Bordeaux, and continues to grow with
new annotations and new data. We are currently in the process of preparing
for the integration of four new complete genomes that we will sequence in
the coming year. Several ideas about presentation of cross-species data that
moves away from a simple `annotated sequence' approach would round out this
second part.

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