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Biomedical subjects

David S Wishart

Publications and source records attributed to David S Wishart.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

DrugBank: a comprehensive resource for in silico drug discovery and exploration.

DrugBank is a unique bioinformatics/cheminformatics resource that combines detailed drug (i.e. chemical) data with comprehensive drug target (i.e. protein) information. The database contains >4100 drug entries including >800 FDA approved small molecule and biotech drugs as well as >3200 experimental drugs. Additionally, >14,000 protein or drug target sequences are linked to these drug entries. Each DrugCard entry contains >80 data fields with half of the information being devoted to drug/chemical data and the other half devoted to drug target or protein data. Many data fields are hyperlinked to other databases (KEGG, PubChem, ChEBI, PDB, Swiss-Prot and GenBank) and a variety of structure viewing applets. The database is fully searchable supporting extensive text, sequence, chemical structure and relational query searches. Potential applications of DrugBank include in silico drug target discovery, drug design, drug docking or screening, drug metabolism prediction, drug interaction prediction and general pharmaceutical education. DrugBank is available at http://redpoll.pharmacy.ualberta.ca/drugbank/.

Computational Biology↗
PubMed2005

A simple method to predict protein flexibility using secondary chemical shifts.

Protein motions play a critical role in many biological processes, such as enzyme catalysis, allosteric regulation, antigen-antibody interactions, and protein-DNA binding. NMR spectroscopy occupies a unique place among methods for investigating protein dynamics due to its ability to provide site-specific information about protein motions over a large range of time scales. However, most NMR methods require a detailed knowledge of the 3D structure and/or the collection of additional experimental data (NOEs, T1, T2, etc.) to accurately measure protein dynamics. Here we present a simple method based on chemical shift data that allows accurate, quantitative, site-specific mapping of protein backbone mobility without the need of a three-dimensional structure or the collection and analysis of NMR relaxation data. Further, we show that this chemical shift method is able to quantitatively predict per-residue RMSD values (from both MD simulations and NMR structural ensembles) as well as model-free backbone order parameters.

Carbon Isotopes↗
PubMed2005

MovieMaker: a web server for rapid rendering of protein motions and interactions.

MovieMaker is a web server that allows short ( approximately 10 s), downloadable movies of protein motions to be generated. It accepts PDB files or PDB accession numbers as input and automatically calculates, renders and merges the necessary image files to create colourful animations covering a wide range of protein motions and other dynamic processes. Users have the option of animating (i) simple rotation, (ii) morphing between two end-state conformers, (iii) short-scale, picosecond vibrations, (iv) ligand docking, (v) protein oligomerization, (vi) mid-scale nanosecond (ensemble) motions and (vii) protein folding/unfolding. MovieMaker does not perform molecular dynamics calculations. Instead it is an animation tool that uses a sophisticated superpositioning algorithm in conjunction with Cartesian coordinate interpolation to rapidly and automatically calculate the intermediate structures needed for many of its animations. Users have extensive control over the rendering style, structure colour, animation quality, background and other image features. MovieMaker is intended to be a general-purpose server that allows both experts and non-experts to easily generate useful, informative protein animations for educational and illustrative purposes. MovieMaker is accessible at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/moviemaker.

Computer Graphics↗
PubMed2005

BASys: a web server for automated bacterial genome annotation.

BASys (Bacterial Annotation System) is a web server that supports automated, in-depth annotation of bacterial genomic (chromosomal and plasmid) sequences. It accepts raw DNA sequence data and an optional list of gene identification information and provides extensive textual annotation and hyperlinked image output. BASys uses >30 programs to determine approximately 60 annotation subfields for each gene, including gene/protein name, GO function, COG function, possible paralogues and orthologues, molecular weight, isoelectric point, operon structure, subcellular localization, signal peptides, transmembrane regions, secondary structure, 3D structure, reactions and pathways. The depth and detail of a BASys annotation matches or exceeds that found in a standard SwissProt entry. BASys also generates colorful, clickable and fully zoomable maps of each query chromosome to permit rapid navigation and detailed visual analysis of all resulting gene annotations. The textual annotations and images that are provided by BASys can be generated in approximately 24 h for an average bacterial chromosome (5 Mb). BASys annotations may be viewed and downloaded anonymously or through a password protected access system. The BASys server and databases can also be downloaded and run locally. BASys is accessible at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/basys.

Chromosomes, Bacterial↗
PubMed2005

Identification of novel and known oocyte-specific genes using complementary DNA subtraction and microarray analysis in three different species.

The main objective of the present study was to identify novel oocyte-specific genes in three different species: bovine, mouse, and Xenopus laevis. To achieve this goal, two powerful technologies were combined: a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based cDNA subtraction, and cDNA microarrays. Three subtractive libraries consisting of 3456 clones were established and enriched for oocyte-specific transcripts. Sequencing analysis of the positive insert-containing clones resulted in the following classification: 53% of the clones corresponded to known cDNAs, 26% were classified as uncharacterized cDNAs, and a final 9% were classified as novel sequences. All these clones were used for cDNA microarray preparation. Results from these microarray analyses revealed that in addition to already known oocyte-specific genes, such as GDF9, BMP15, and ZP, known genes with unknown function in the oocyte were identified, such as a MLF1-interacting protein (MLF1IP), B-cell translocation gene 4 (BTG4), and phosphotyrosine-binding protein (xPTB). Furthermore, 15 novel oocyte-specific genes were validated by reverse transcription-PCR to confirm their preferential expression in the oocyte compared to somatic tissues. The results obtained in the present study confirmed that microarray analysis is a robust technique to identify true positives from the suppressive subtractive hybridization experiment. Furthermore, obtaining oocyte-specific genes from three species simultaneously allowed us to look at important genes that are conserved across species. Further characterization of these novel oocyte-specific genes will lead to a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms related to the unique functions found in the oocyte.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

BacMap: an interactive picture atlas of annotated bacterial genomes.

BacMap is an interactive visual database containing fully labeled, zoomable and searchable chromosome maps from more than 170 bacterial (archaebacterial and eubacterial) species. It uses a recently developed visualization tool (CGView) to generate high-resolution circular genome maps from sequence feature information. Each map includes an interface that allows the image to be expanded and rotated. In the default view, identified genes are drawn to scale and colored according to coding directions. When a region of interest is expanded, gene labels are displayed. Each label is hyperlinked to a custom 'gene card' which provides several fields of information concerning the corresponding DNA and protein sequences. Each genome map is searchable via a local BLAST search and a gene name/synonym search. BacMap is freely available at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/BacMap/.

Chromosome Mapping↗
PubMed2005

PA-GOSUB: a searchable database of model organism protein sequences with their predicted Gene Ontology molecular function and subcellular localization.

PA-GOSUB (Proteome Analyst: Gene Ontology Molecular Function and Subcellular Localization) is a publicly available, web-based, searchable and downloadable database that contains the sequences, predicted GO molecular functions and predicted subcellular localizations of more than 107,000 proteins from 10 model organisms (and growing), covering the major kingdoms and phyla for which annotated proteomes exist (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~bioinfo/PA/GOSUB). The PA-GOSUB database effectively expands the coverage of subcellular localization and GO function annotations by a significant factor (already over five for subcellular localization, compared with Swiss-Prot v42.7), and more model organisms are being added to PA-GOSUB as their sequenced proteomes become available. PA-GOSUB can be used in three main ways. First, a researcher can browse the pre-computed PA-GOSUB annotations on a per-organism and per-protein basis using annotation-based and text-based filters. Second, a user can perform BLAST searches against the PA-GOSUB database and use the annotations from the homologs as simple predictors for the new sequences. Third, the whole of PA-GOSUB can be downloaded in either FASTA or comma-separated values (CSV) formats.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed2005

A simple method to adjust inconsistently referenced 13C and 15N chemical shift assignments of proteins.

Inconsistent 13C and 15N chemical shift referencing is a continuing problem associated with protein chemical shift assignments deposited in BioMagResBank (BMRB). Here we describe a simple and robust approach that can quantitatively determine the 13C and 15N referencing offsets solely from chemical shift assignment data and independently of 3D coordinate data. This novel structure-independent approach permitted the assessment and determination of 13C and 15N reference offsets for all protein entries deposited in the BMRB. Tests on 452 proteins with known 3D structures show that this structure-independent approach yields 13C and 15N referencing offsets that exhibit excellent agreement with those calculated on the basis of 3D structures. Furthermore, this protocol appears to improve the accuracy of chemical shift-derived secondary structural identification, and has been formally incorporated into a computer program called PSSI (http//www.pronmr.com).

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed2005

Bioinformatics in drug development and assessment.

Bioinformatics is playing an increasingly important role in nearly all aspects of drug discovery, drug assessment, and drug development. This growing importance lies not only in the role that bioinformatics plays in handling large volumes of data, but also in the utility of bioinformatics tools to predict, analyze, or help interpret clinical and preclinical findings. This review focuses on describing and evaluating some of the newer or more important bioinformatics resources (i.e., databases and software) that are of growing importance to understanding or predicting drug metabolism, especially with respect to the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, (ADME), and toxicity (T) of both existing drugs and potential drug leads. Detailed descriptions and critical assessments of a number of potentially useful bioinformatics/cheminformatics databases and predictive ADMET software tools are provided. Additionally, several pharmaceutically important applications of both the databases and software are highlighted. Given the rapid growth in this area and the rapid changes that are taking place, a special emphasis is placed on freely available or Web-accessible resources.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Dynamic cellular automata: an alternative approach to cellular simulation.

A wide variety of approaches, ranging from Petri nets to systems of partial differential equations, have been used to model very specific aspects of cellular or biochemical functions. Here we describe how an agent-based or dynamic cellular automata (DCA) approach can be used as a very simple, yet very general method to model many different kinds of cellular or biochemical processes. Specifically, using simple pairwise interaction rules coupled with random object moves to simulate Brownian motion, we show how the DCA approach can be used to easily and accurately model diffusion, viscous drag, enzyme rate processes, metabolism (the Kreb's cycle), and complex genetic circuits (the repressilator). We also demonstrate how DCA approaches are able to accurately capture the stochasticity of many biological processes. The success and simplicity of this technique suggests that many other physical properties and significantly more complicated aspects of cellular behavior could be modeled using DCA methods. An easy-to-use, graphically-based computer program, called SimCell, was developed to perform the DCA simulations described here. It is available at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/SimCell/.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2004

Synthesis and evaluation of keto-glutamine analogues as potent inhibitors of severe acute respiratory syndrome 3CLpro.

The 3C-like proteinase (3CL(pro)) of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus is a key target for structure-based drug design against this viral infection. The enzyme recognizes peptide substrates with a glutamine residue at the P1 site. A series of keto-glutamine analogues with a phthalhydrazido group at the alpha-position were synthesized and tested as reversible inhibitiors against SARS 3CL(pro). Attachment of tripeptide (Ac-Val-Thr-Leu) to these glutamine-based "warheads" generated significantly better inhibitors (4a-c, 8a-d) with IC(50) values ranging from 0.60 to 70 microM.

Antiviral Agents↗
PubMed2004

Circular genome visualization and exploration using CGView.

UNLABELLED: CGView (Circular Genome Viewer) is a Java application and library for generating high-quality, zoomable maps of circular genomes. It converts XML or tab-delimited input into a graphical map (PNG, JPG or Scalable Vector Graphics format), complete with sequence features, labels, legends and footnotes. In addition to the default full view map, the program can generate a series of hyperlinked maps showing expanded views. The linked maps can be explored using any Web browser, allowing rapid genome browsing and facilitating data sharing. AVAILABILITY: CGView (the standalone application, library or applet), sample input, sample maps and documentation can be obtained from http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/cgview/ CONTACT: david.wishart@ualberta.ca.

Chromosome Mapping↗
PubMed2004

Dynamic relationships among type IIa bacteriocins: temperature effects on antimicrobial activity and on structure of the C-terminal amphipathic alpha helix as a receptor-binding region.

Dynamic aspects of structural relationships among class IIa bacteriocins, which are antimicrobial peptides from lactic acid bacteria (LAB), have been examined by use of circular dichroism (CD), molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and activity testing. Pediocin PA-1 is a potent class IIa bacteriocin, which contains a second C-terminal disulfide bond in addition to the highly conserved N-terminal disulfide bond. A mutant of pediocin PA-1, ped[M31Nle], wherein the replacement of methionine by norleucine (Nle) gives enhanced stability toward aerobic oxidation, was synthesized by solid-phase peptide synthesis to study the activity of the peptide in relation to its structure. The secondary structural analysis from CD spectra of ped[M31Nle], carnobacteriocin B2 (cbn B2), and leucocin A (leuA) at different temperatures suggests that the alpha-helical region of these peptides is important for target recognition and activity. Using molecular modeling and dynamic simulations, complete models of pediocin PA-1, enterocin P, sakacin P, and curvacin A in 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol (TFE) were generated to compare structural relationships among this class of bacteriocins. Their high sequence similarity allows for the use of homology modeling techniques. Starting from homology models based on solution structures of leuA (PDB code 1CW6) and cbnB2 (PDB code 1CW5), results of 2-4 ns MD simulations in TFE and water at 298 and 313 K are reported. The results indicate that these peptides have a common helical C-terminal domain in TFE but a more variable beta sheet or coiled N terminus. At elevated temperatures, pediocin PA-1 maintains its overall structure, whereas peptides without the second C-terminal disulfide bond, such as enterocin P, sakacin P, curvacin A, leuA, and cbnB2 experience partial disruption of the helical section. Pediocin PA-1 and ped[M31Nle] were found to be equally active at different temperatures, whereas the other peptides that lack the second C-terminal disulfide bond are 30-50 times less antimicrobially potent at 310 K (37 degrees C) than at 298 K (25 degrees C). These results indicate that the structural changes in the helical region observed at elevated temperatures account for the loss of activity of these peptides. The presence of C-terminal hydrophobic residues on one side of the amphipathic helix in class IIa bacteriocins is an important feature for receptor recognition and specificity toward particular organisms. This study assists in the understanding of structure-activity relationships in type IIa bacteriocins and demonstrates the importance of the conserved C-terminal amphipathic alpha helix for activity.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed2004

PlasMapper: a web server for drawing and auto-annotating plasmid maps.

PlasMapper is a comprehensive web server that automatically generates and annotates high-quality circular plasmid maps. Taking only the plasmid/vector DNA sequence as input, PlasMapper uses sequence pattern matching and BLAST alignment to automatically identify and label common promoters, terminators, cloning sites, restriction sites, reporter genes, affinity tags, selectable marker genes, replication origins and open reading frames. PlasMapper then presents the identified features in textual form and as high-resolution, multicolored graphical output. The appearance and contents of the output can be customized in numerous ways using several supplied options. Further, PlasMapper images can be rendered in both rasterized (PNG and JPG) and vector graphics (SVG) formats to accommodate a variety of user needs or preferences. The images and textual output are of sufficient quality that they may be used directly in publications or presentations. The PlasMapper web server is freely accessible at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/PlasMapper.

Chromosome Mapping↗
PubMed2004

SuperPose: a simple server for sophisticated structural superposition.

The SuperPose web server rapidly and robustly calculates both pairwise and multiple protein structure superpositions using a modified quaternion eigenvalue approach. SuperPose generates sequence alignments, structure alignments, PDB (Protein Data Bank) coordinates and RMSD statistics, as well as difference distance plots and images (both static and interactive) of the superimposed molecules. SuperPose employs a simple interface that requires only PDB files or accession numbers as input. All other superposition decisions are made by the program. SuperPose is uniquely able to superimpose structures that differ substantially in sequence, size or shape. It is also capable of handling a much larger range of superposition queries and situations than many standalone programs and yields results that are intuitively more in agreement with known biological or structural data. The SuperPose web server is freely accessible at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/SuperPose/.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed2004

Proteome Analyst: custom predictions with explanations in a web-based tool for high-throughput proteome annotations.

Proteome Analyst (PA) (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~bioinfo/PA/) is a publicly available, high-throughput, web-based system for predicting various properties of each protein in an entire proteome. Using machine-learned classifiers, PA can predict, for example, the GeneQuiz general function and Gene Ontology (GO) molecular function of a protein. In addition, PA is currently the most accurate and most comprehensive system for predicting subcellular localization, the location within a cell where a protein performs its main function. Two other capabilities of PA are notable. First, PA can create a custom classifier to predict a new property, without requiring any programming, based on labeled training data (i.e. a set of examples, each with the correct classification label) provided by a user. PA has been used to create custom classifiers for potassium-ion channel proteins and other general function ontologies. Second, PA provides a sophisticated explanation feature that shows why one prediction is chosen over another. The PA system produces a Naïve Bayes classifier, which is amenable to a graphical and interactive approach to explanations for its predictions; transparent predictions increase the user's confidence in, and understanding of, PA.

Internet↗
PubMed2004

GelScape: a web-based server for interactively annotating, manipulating, comparing and archiving 1D and 2D gel images.

GelScape is a web-based tool that permits facile, interactive annotation, comparison, manipulation and storage of protein gel images. It uses Java applet-servlet technology to allow rapid, remote image handling and image processing in a platform-independent manner. It supports many of the features found in commercial, stand-alone gel analysis software including spot annotation, spot integration, gel warping, image resizing, HTML image mapping, image overlaying as well as the storage of gel image and gel annotation data in compliance with Federated Gel Database requirements.

Computer Graphics↗