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Journal ArticleDOI

Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome.

Eric S. Lander1, Lauren Linton1, Bruce W. Birren1, Chad Nusbaum1  +245 moreInstitutions (29)
15 Feb 2001-Nature (Nature Publishing Group)-Vol. 409, Iss: 6822, pp 860-921
TL;DR: The results of an international collaboration to produce and make freely available a draft sequence of the human genome are reported and an initial analysis is presented, describing some of the insights that can be gleaned from the sequence.
Abstract: The human genome holds an extraordinary trove of information about human development, physiology, medicine and evolution. Here we report the results of an international collaboration to produce and make freely available a draft sequence of the human genome. We also present an initial analysis of the data, describing some of the insights that can be gleaned from the sequence.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The definition and use of family-specific, manually curated gathering thresholds are explained and some of the features of domains of unknown function (also known as DUFs) are discussed, which constitute a rapidly growing class of families within Pfam.
Abstract: Pfam is a widely used database of protein families and domains. This article describes a set of major updates that we have implemented in the latest release (version 24.0). The most important change is that we now use HMMER3, the latest version of the popular profile hidden Markov model package. This software is approximately 100 times faster than HMMER2 and is more sensitive due to the routine use of the forward algorithm. The move to HMMER3 has necessitated numerous changes to Pfam that are described in detail. Pfam release 24.0 contains 11,912 families, of which a large number have been significantly updated during the past two years. Pfam is available via servers in the UK (http://pfam.sanger.ac.uk/), the USA (http://pfam.janelia.org/) and Sweden (http://pfam.sbc.su.se/).

14,075 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
J. Craig Venter1, Mark Raymond Adams1, Eugene W. Myers1, Peter W. Li1  +269 moreInstitutions (12)
16 Feb 2001-Science
TL;DR: Comparative genomic analysis indicates vertebrate expansions of genes associated with neuronal function, with tissue-specific developmental regulation, and with the hemostasis and immune systems are indicated.
Abstract: A 2.91-billion base pair (bp) consensus sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome was generated by the whole-genome shotgun sequencing method. The 14.8-billion bp DNA sequence was generated over 9 months from 27,271,853 high-quality sequence reads (5.11-fold coverage of the genome) from both ends of plasmid clones made from the DNA of five individuals. Two assembly strategies-a whole-genome assembly and a regional chromosome assembly-were used, each combining sequence data from Celera and the publicly funded genome effort. The public data were shredded into 550-bp segments to create a 2.9-fold coverage of those genome regions that had been sequenced, without including biases inherent in the cloning and assembly procedure used by the publicly funded group. This brought the effective coverage in the assemblies to eightfold, reducing the number and size of gaps in the final assembly over what would be obtained with 5.11-fold coverage. The two assembly strategies yielded very similar results that largely agree with independent mapping data. The assemblies effectively cover the euchromatic regions of the human chromosomes. More than 90% of the genome is in scaffold assemblies of 100,000 bp or more, and 25% of the genome is in scaffolds of 10 million bp or larger. Analysis of the genome sequence revealed 26,588 protein-encoding transcripts for which there was strong corroborating evidence and an additional approximately 12,000 computationally derived genes with mouse matches or other weak supporting evidence. Although gene-dense clusters are obvious, almost half the genes are dispersed in low G+C sequence separated by large tracts of apparently noncoding sequence. Only 1.1% of the genome is spanned by exons, whereas 24% is in introns, with 75% of the genome being intergenic DNA. Duplications of segmental blocks, ranging in size up to chromosomal lengths, are abundant throughout the genome and reveal a complex evolutionary history. Comparative genomic analysis indicates vertebrate expansions of genes associated with neuronal function, with tissue-specific developmental regulation, and with the hemostasis and immune systems. DNA sequence comparisons between the consensus sequence and publicly funded genome data provided locations of 2.1 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A random pair of human haploid genomes differed at a rate of 1 bp per 1250 on average, but there was marked heterogeneity in the level of polymorphism across the genome. Less than 1% of all SNPs resulted in variation in proteins, but the task of determining which SNPs have functional consequences remains an open challenge.

12,098 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
14 Jan 2005-Cell
TL;DR: In a four-genome analysis of 3' UTRs, approximately 13,000 regulatory relationships were detected above the estimate of false-positive predictions, thereby implicating as miRNA targets more than 5300 human genes, which represented 30% of the gene set.

11,624 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A mature web tool for rapid and reliable display of any requested portion of the genome at any scale, together with several dozen aligned annotation tracks, is provided at http://genome.ucsc.edu.
Abstract: As vertebrate genome sequences near completion and research refocuses to their analysis, the issue of effective genome annotation display becomes critical. A mature web tool for rapid and reliable display of any requested portion of the genome at any scale, together with several dozen aligned annotation tracks, is provided at http://genome.ucsc.edu. This browser displays assembly contigs and gaps, mRNA and expressed sequence tag alignments, multiple gene predictions, cross-species homologies, single nucleotide polymorphisms, sequence-tagged sites, radiation hybrid data, transposon repeats, and more as a stack of coregistered tracks. Text and sequence-based searches provide quick and precise access to any region of specific interest. Secondary links from individual features lead to sequence details and supplementary off-site databases. One-half of the annotation tracks are computed at the University of California, Santa Cruz from publicly available sequence data; collaborators worldwide provide the rest. Users can stably add their own custom tracks to the browser for educational or research purposes. The conceptual and technical framework of the browser, its underlying MYSQL database, and overall use are described. The web site currently serves over 50,000 pages per day to over 3000 different users.

9,605 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Velvet represents a new approach to assembly that can leverage very short reads in combination with read pairs to produce useful assemblies and is in close agreement with simulated results without read-pair information.
Abstract: We have developed a new set of algorithms, collectively called "Velvet," to manipulate de Bruijn graphs for genomic sequence assembly. A de Bruijn graph is a compact representation based on short words (k-mers) that is ideal for high coverage, very short read (25-50 bp) data sets. Applying Velvet to very short reads and paired-ends information only, one can produce contigs of significant length, up to 50-kb N50 length in simulations of prokaryotic data and 3-kb N50 on simulated mammalian BACs. When applied to real Solexa data sets without read pairs, Velvet generated contigs of approximately 8 kb in a prokaryote and 2 kb in a mammalian BAC, in close agreement with our simulated results without read-pair information. Velvet represents a new approach to assembly that can leverage very short reads in combination with read pairs to produce useful assemblies.

9,389 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An overview of currently identified human centromeres: their discoveries, molecular characterization, and organization with respect to other centromeric repetitive DNA families is presented.
Abstract: Human centromeres have been extensively studied over the past two decades. Consequently, more is known of centromere structure and organization in humans than in any other higher eukaryote species. Recent advances in the construction of a human (or mammalian) artificial chromosome have fostered increased interest in determining the structure and function of fully functional human centromeres. Here, we present an overview of currently identified human centromeric repetitive DNA families: their discoveries, molecular characterization, and organization with respect to other centromeric repetitive DNA families. A brief examination of some functional based studies is also included.

239 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The discovery of a 2 kilobase insertion containing a rearranged L1 element in the dystrophin gene of a muscular dystrophy patient and cloned the precursor of this insertion demonstrate that multiple active L1 elements exist in the human genome, and that a readthrough transcript of an active element is capable of retrotransposition.
Abstract: We have found a 2 kilobase insertion containing a rearranged L1 element in the dystrophin gene of a muscular dystrophy patient. We cloned the precursor of this insertion, the second known active human L1 element. The locus, LRE2, has one allele derived from the patient which matches the insertion sequence exactly. LRE2 has a perfect 13-15 bp target site duplication, two open reading frames, and an unusual 21 bp truncation of the 5' end, suggesting that a slightly truncated element can still retrotranspose. It differs from LRE1 by approximately 0.7%. There is an L1 element at LRE2 on approximately 66% of human chromosomes 1q, and the element is absent from chimpanzee and gorilla genomes. These data demonstrate that multiple active L1 elements exist in the human genome, and that a readthrough transcript of an active element is capable of retrotransposition.

239 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Uta Francke1
TL;DR: The status of the molecular characterization of the deletion and flanking regions, the genes identified in the deletion region and their possible roles in generating the complex multi-system clinical phenotype are discussed.
Abstract: Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS; OMIM 194050) is caused by heterozygous deletions of approximately 1.6 Mb of chromosomal sub-band 7q11.23. The deletions are rather uniform in size as they arise spontaneously by inter- or intrachromosomal crossover events within misaligned duplicated regions of high sequence identity that flank the typical deletion. This review will discuss the status of the molecular characterization of the deletion and flanking regions, the genes identified in the deletion region and their possible roles in generating the complex multi-system clinical phenotype.

238 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Since Alus have appeared only recently within the primate lineage, this proposal provokes the challenging question of how Alu RNA could have possibly assumed a significant role in cell physiology.
Abstract: The evolution, mobility and deleterious genetic effects of human Alus are fairly well understood. The complexity of regulated transcriptional expression of Alus is becoming apparent and insight into the mechanism of retrotransposition is emerging. Unresolved questions concern why mobile, highly repetitive short interspersed elements (SINEs) have been tolerated throughout evolution and why and how families of such sequences are periodically replaced. Either certain SINEs are more successful genomic parasites or positive selection drives their relative success and genomic maintenance. A complete understanding of the evolutionary dynamics and significance of SINEs requires determining whether or not they have a function(s). Recent evidence suggests two possibilities, one concerning DNA and the other RNA. Dispersed Alus exhibit remarkable tissue-specific differences in the level of their 5-methylcytosine content. Differences in Alu methylation in the male and female germlines suggest that Alu DNA may be involved in either the unique chromatin organization of sperm or signaling events in the early embryo. Alu RNA is increased by cellular insults and stimulates protein synthesis by inhibiting PKR, the eIF2 kinase that is regulated by double-stranded RNA. PKR serves other roles potentially linking Alu RNA to a variety of vital cell functions. Since Alus have appeared only recently within the primate lineage, this proposal provokes the challenging question of how Alu RNA could have possibly assumed a significant role in cell physiology.

237 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 May 1993-Genetics
TL;DR: Physical maps of the six smallest chromosomes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are presented, based on the analysis of an overlapping set of lambda and cosmid clones, and span an estimated 97% of the DNA on the six chromosomes.
Abstract: Physical maps of the six smallest chromosomes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are presented. In order of increasing size, they are chromosomes I, VI, III, IX, V and VIII, comprising 2.49 megabase pairs of DNA. The maps are based on the analysis of an overlapping set of lambda and cosmid clones. Overlaps between adjacent clones were recognized by shared restriction fragments produced by the combined action of EcoRI and HindIII. The average spacing between mapped cleavage sites is 2.6 kb. Five of the six chromosomes were mapped from end to end without discontinuities; a single internal gap remains in the map of chromosome IX. The reported maps span an estimated 97% of the DNA on the six chromosomes; nearly all the missing segments are telomeric. The maps are fully cross-correlated with the previously published SfiI/NotI map of the yeast genome by A. J. Link and M. V. Olson. They have also been cross-correlated with the yeast genetic map at 51 loci.

235 citations