In this report, we introduce the CDKN2A Database, an online database of germline and somatic variants of the CDKN2A tumor suppressor gene recorded in human disease through the year 2002, annotated with evolutionary, structural, and functional information. The CDKN2A Database improves upon existing resources by: 1) including both somatic mutations and germline variants, thereby adding the perspective of somatic cell carcinogenesis to that of hereditary cancer predisposition; 2) including information that assists with the interpretation of allelic variants, such as other primary data (sequences, structures, alignments, functional measurements, and literature references) and annotations (extensive text, figures, and a tree-based phylogenetic classification); and 3) providing the information in a format that allows a user to either download the database or to easily manipulate it online. We describe the database structure, content, current uses, and potential implications (http://biodesktop.uvm.edu/perl/p16).
The evolution of the genetic code is an extremely complex problem. The addition of a new method by which the code could evolve, however, allows much to be explained about the way in which the present codes (gamma 3 and gamma 3) originated. The idea that ambiguity would allow the length of the codon to change is very useful, since it predicts the distribution of the 4-blocs and 2-blocs in the code, determines where variations in the code are probable, and presents a scenario for the evolution of the code.
Conservative mutations (those which do not change the amino acid coded for a codon) are discussed. In particular, formulas are given for the computation of the probability that a mutation is conservative and the expected value of this probability if the genetic code were randomly permuted, assuming wobble and non-wobble conditions.
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