an integrative approach to ortholog prediction for disease-focused and other functional studies一个综合的方法来直接同源注重预测疾病和其他功能的研究.pdfVIP

Hu et al. BMC Bioinformatics 2011, 12:357 /1471-2105/12/357 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access An integrative approach to ortholog prediction for disease-focused and other functional studies 1 1 1 2 3 1,4 Yanhui Hu , Ian Flockhart , Arunachalam Vinayagam , Clemens Bergwitz , Bonnie Berger , Norbert Perrimon and Stephanie E Mohr1* Abstract Background: Mapping of orthologous genes among species serves an important role in functional genomics by allowing researchers to develop hypotheses about gene function in one species based on what is known about the functions of orthologs in other species. Several tools for predicting orthologous gene relationships are available. However, these tools can give different results and identification of predicted orthologs is not always straightforward. Results: We report a simple but effective tool, the Drosophila RNAi Screening Center Integrative Ortholog Prediction Tool (DIOPT; /diopt), for rapid identification of orthologs. DIOPT integrates existing approaches, facilitating rapid identification of orthologs among human, mouse, zebrafish, C. elegans, Drosophila, and S. cerevisiae. As compared to individual tools, DIOPT shows increased sensitivity with only a modest decrease in specificity. Moreover, the flexibility built into the DIOPT graphical user interface allows researchers with different goals to appropriately ‘cast a wide net’ or limit results to highest confidence predictions. DIOPT also displays protein and domain alignments, including percent amino acid identity, for predicted ortholog pairs. This helps users identify the most appropriate matches among multiple possible orthologs. To facilitate using model organisms for