Evolutionary mechanism of antigenic variation genes

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26280105
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Life / Health / Medical informatics
• Research Institution: 大学共同利用機関法人情報・システム研究機構(機構本部施設等) (2017); Kyoto University (2014-2016)
• Principal Investigator: Goto Susumu 大学共同利用機関法人情報・システム研究機構(機構本部施設等), データサイエンス共同利用基盤施設, 教授 (40263149)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 抗原変異 / 比較ゲノム / 遺伝子ファミリー / 進化 / 病原微生物

Outline of Final Research Achievements

One of the mechanisms for microbial parasites to evade host immune systems is antigenic variation, which alters target antigens of the host immune attack to escape from their recognition. We have developed a database named varDB by accumulating information on proteins regarding antigenic variations and analyzed their amino acid and nucleotide sequences to elucidate their evolutionary mechanisms. Mainly focusing on the malaria parasites, Plasmodium species, whose complete genome sequences are available, we have collected related sequence information based on the literature search and ortholog detection, to make the interspecies comparisons available. We have also developed a computational pipeline for analyzing their evolutionary relationships and applied it to human evolution and biosynthetic pathway evolution analyses.

Free Research Field

バイオインフォマティクス