TAXI and CoryneRegNet 7.0, A creation and update of data warehouses for study speciation and regulation of transcription of prokaryotic organisms

Abstract

The evolution of informatics through time opened possibilities to other fields that were never experienced before. With biology, it was not different; it opened a new branch and gathered efforts to develop knowledge and create a new field: bioinformatics. With sequencing projects, it generated a huge amount of data about organisms. When those organisms were compared, it was possible to notice shared genes between them, some that were more basal and others that were more specific to certain species or strain. In prokaryotes, genes are organized in units, which are transcribed together, sharing initiators and terminators. These units can be formed by one or more genes, monocistronic and policistronic respectively, and the construction of the unit might happen in the evolution of the organism as a whole or, in special cases, it might be specific to certain genes, species, or strains. The control of transcription of those units is made by some special proteins called transcription factors and sigma factors, creating a gene regulatory network, another field studied by bioinformatics to understand the survival and growth of organisms. This work compiles the efforts made to develop two systems with distinct main goals but with similarities in the developed studies. The evolution and construction of organisms in speciation could explain the creation and growth of gene regulatory networks, since the speciation process adds new features to organisms making the gene regulatory network grow.