The laboratory rat (Rattus norvegicus) is an indispensable tool in experimental medicine and drug development, having made inestimable contributions to human health. We report here the genome sequence of the Brown Norway (BN) rat strain. The sequence represents a high-quality 'draft' covering over 90% of the genome. The BN rat sequence is the third complete mammalian genome to be deciphered, and three-way comparisons with the human and mouse genomes resolve details of mammalian evolution. This first comprehensive analysis includes genes and proteins and their relation to human disease, repeated sequences, comparative genome-wide studies of mammalian orthologous chromosomal regions and rearrangement breakpoints, reconstruction of ancestral karyotypes and the events leading to existing species, rates of variation, and lineage-specific and lineage-independent evolutionary events such as expansion of gene families, orthology relations and protein evolution.

A new web-server tool estimates Ki values from experimentally determined IC50 values for inhibitors of enzymes and of binding reactions between macromolecules (e.g. proteins, polynucleic acids) and ligands. This converter was developed to enable end users to help gauge the quality of the underlying assumptions used in these calculations which depend on the type of mechanism of inhibitor action and the concentrations of the interacting molecular species. Additional calculations are performed for nonclassical, tightly bound inhibitors of enzyme-substrate or of macromolecule-ligand systems in which free, rather than total concentrations of the reacting species are required. Required user-defined input values include the total enzyme (or another target molecule) and substrate (or ligand) concentrations, the Km of the enzyme-substrate (or the Kd of the target-ligand) reaction, and the IC50 value. Assumptions and caveats for these calculations are discussed along with examples taken from the literature. The host database for this converter contains kinetic constants and other data for inhibitors of the proteolytic clostridial neurotoxins (http://botdb.abcc.ncifcrf.gov/toxin/kiConverter.jsp).

http://biodbnet.abcc.ncifcrf.gov.

The non-B DB, available at http://nonb.abcc.ncifcrf.gov, catalogs predicted non-B DNA-forming sequence motifs, including Z-DNA, G-quadruplex, A-phased repeats, inverted repeats, mirror repeats, direct repeats and their corresponding subsets: cruciforms, triplexes and slipped structures, in several genomes. Version 2.0 of the database revises and re-implements the motif discovery algorithms to better align with accepted definitions and thresholds for motifs, expands the non-B DNA-forming motifs coverage by including short tandem repeats and adds key visualization tools to compare motif locations relative to other genomic annotations. Non-B DB v2.0 extends the ability for comparative genomics by including re-annotation of the five organisms reported in non-B DB v1.0, human, chimpanzee, dog, macaque and mouse, and adds seven additional organisms: orangutan, rat, cow, pig, horse, platypus and Arabidopsis thaliana. Additionally, the non-B DB v2.0 provides an overall improved graphical user interface and faster query performance.

Physical mapping data were combined with public draft and finished sequences to derive subtelomeric sequence assemblies for each of the 41 genetically distinct human telomere regions. Sequence gaps that remain on the reference telomeres are generally small,well-defined,and for the most part,restricted to regions directly adjacent to the terminal (TTAGGG)n tract. Of the 20.66 Mb of subtelomeric DNA analyzed, 3.01 Mb are subtelomeric repeat sequences (Srpt),and an additional 2.11 Mb are segmental duplications. The subtelomeric sequence assemblies are enriched >25-fold in short,internal (TTAGGG)n-like sequences relative to the rest of the genome; a total of 114 (TTAGGG)n-like islands were found,55 within Srpt regions,35 within one-copy regions,11 at one-copy/Srpt or Srpt/segmental duplication boundaries,and 13 at the telomeric ends of assemblies. Transcripts were annotated in each assembly,noting their mapping coordinates relative to their respective telomere and whether they originate in duplicated DNA or single-copy DNA. A total of 697 transcripts were found in 15.53 Mb of one-copy DNA,76 transcripts in 2.11 Mb of segmentally duplicated DNA,and 168 transcripts in 3.01 Mb of Srpt sequence. This overall transcript density is similar (within ∼10%) to that found genome-wide. Zinc finger-containing genes and olfactory receptor genes are duplicated within and between multiple telomere regions