slik Gene Controls Cell Growth and Survival 英文参考文献.docVIP

Research Digest Synopses of Research Articles Newly Sequenced Worm a Boon for Worm Biologists Caenorhabditis elegans, a 1-mm soil-dwelling roundworm with 959 cells, may be the best-understood multicellular organism on the planet. As the most“pared-down’’animal that shares essential features of human biology—from embryogenesis to aging—C. elegans is a favorite subject for studying how genes control these processes.The way these genes work in worms helps scientists understand how diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s develop in humans when genes malfunction.With the publication of a draft genome sequence of C. elegans’?rst cousin, C. briggsae, Lincoln Stein and colleagues have greatly enhanced biologists’ability to mine C. elegans for biological gold. Every organism carries clues to its molecular operating system and evolutionary past embedded in the content and structure of its genome.To unearth these clues, scientists examine different regions of the genome, assembling data on sequences, genes, functional elements that are the two genomes, Stein et al. not only found strong evidence for roughly 1,300 new C. elegans genes, but also indications that certain regions could be“footprints of unknown functional elements.’’While both worms have roughly the same number of genes (about 19,000), the C. briggsae genome has more repeated sequences, making its genome slightly larger. Because the worms set out on separate evolutionary paths about the same time mice and humans parted ways—about 100 million years ago, compared to 75 million years ago—the authors could compare how the two worm genomes have diverged with the divergence between mice and humans.The worms’ genomes, it seems, are evolving faster than their mammalian counterparts, based on the change in the size of the protein families (C. elegans has more chemosensory proteins than C. briggsae, for example), the rate of chromosomal rearrangements, and the rate at which silent mutations (DNA changes not genes (but tha