Plant expressed sequence tags databases: practical uses and the improvement of their searches using network module analysis

概要

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Sequencing technology has been rapidly advancing. Giga-sequencers, which produce several gigabases of fragmented sequences per run, are attractive for decoding genomes and expressed sequence tags (ESTs). A variety of plant genomes and ESTs have been sequenced since the decoding of the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, the model plant. ESTs are useful for functional analyses of genes and proteins and as biomarkers, which are used to identify particular tissues and conditions due to the specificity of their expression. Sequenced plant genomes and ESTs have been entered into public databases, where they are freely downloadable. Sequences representative of particular functions or structures have been collected from public databases to curate smaller databases useful for studying protein function. Here, we discuss the uses of the currently available plant EST datasets. We also demonstrate the use of network module analysis to perform more stable (or irrespective of the difference of performance in each analyzing PC) homology searches and to provide more information on molecular functions of plant ESTs and proteins.