Research interests

  • Interests
    A. platensis NIES-39, group II introns, Database Management, Database Development

Publications

  • The 2nd DBCLS BioHackathon: interoperable bioinformatics Web services for integrated applications.

    Toshiaki Katayama, Mark D Wilkinson, Rutger Vos, Takeshi Kawashima, Shuichi Kawashima, Mitsuteru Nakao, Yasunori Yamamoto, Hong-Woo Chun, Atsuko Yamaguchi, Shin Kawano, [......], Martin Senger, Jessica Severin, Yasumasa Shigemoto, Hideaki Sugawara, James Taylor, Oswaldo Trelles, Chisato Yamasaki, Riu Yamashita, Noriyuki Satoh, Toshihisa Takagi

    Journal of biomedical semantics. 08/2011; 2:4.

    ABSTRACT: The interaction between biological researchers and the bioinformatics tools they use is still hampered by incomplete interoperability between such tools. To ensure interoperability initiatives are effectively deployed, end-user applications need to be aware of, and support, best practices ... [more] ABSTRACT: The interaction between biological researchers and the bioinformatics tools they use is still hampered by incomplete interoperability between such tools. To ensure interoperability initiatives are effectively deployed, end-user applications need to be aware of, and support, best practices and standards. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and genome biologists came together to explore and raise awareness of these issues: BioHackathon 2009. Developers in attendance came from diverse backgrounds, with experts in Web services, workflow tools, text mining and visualization. Genome biologists provided expertise and exemplar data from the domains of sequence and pathway analysis and glyco-informatics. One goal of the meeting was to evaluate the ability to address real world use cases in these domains using the tools that the developers represented. This resulted in i) a workflow to annotate 100,000 sequences from an invertebrate species; ii) an integrated system for analysis of the transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) enriched based on differential gene expression data obtained from a microarray experiment; iii) a workflow to enumerate putative physical protein interactions among enzymes in a metabolic pathway using protein structure data; iv) a workflow to analyze glyco-gene-related diseases by searching for human homologs of glyco-genes in other species, such as fruit flies, and retrieving their phenotype-annotated SNPs. Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use-case, a second major purpose of the BioHackathon was to highlight areas of insufficiency. We discuss the issues raised by our exploration of the problem/solution space, concluding that there are still problems with the way Web services are modeled and annotated, including: i) the absence of several useful data or analysis functions in the Web service "space"; ii) the lack of documentation of methods; iii) lack of compliance with the SOAP/WSDL specification among and between various programming-language libraries; and iv) incompatibility between various bioinformatics data formats. Although it was still difficult to solve real world problems posed to the developers by the biological researchers in attendance because of these problems, we note the promise of addressing these issues within a semantic framework.
  • BioMart Central Portal: an open database network for the biological community.

    Jonathan M Guberman, J Ai, O Arnaiz, Joachim Baran, Andrew Blake, Richard Baldock, Claude Chelala, David Croft, Anthony Cros, Rosalind J Cutts, [......], Jun Wang, Jianxin Wang, Brett Whitty, D T Wong, Marie Wong-Erasmus, L Yao, Ken Youens-Clark, Christina Yung, Junjun Zhang, Arek Kasprzyk

    Database : the journal of biological databases and curation. 01/2011; 2011:bar041.

    BioMart Central Portal is a first of its kind, community-driven effort to provide unified access to dozens of biological databases spanning genomics, proteomics, model organisms, cancer data, ontology information and more. Anybody can contribute an independently maintained resource to the Central Po... [more] BioMart Central Portal is a first of its kind, community-driven effort to provide unified access to dozens of biological databases spanning genomics, proteomics, model organisms, cancer data, ontology information and more. Anybody can contribute an independently maintained resource to the Central Portal, allowing it to be exposed to and shared with the research community, and linking it with the other resources in the portal. Users can take advantage of the common interface to quickly utilize different sources without learning a new system for each. The system also simplifies cross-database searches that might otherwise require several complicated steps. Several integrated tools streamline common tasks, such as converting between ID formats and retrieving sequences. The combination of a wide variety of databases, an easy-to-use interface, robust programmatic access and the array of tools make Central Portal a one-stop shop for biological data querying. Here, we describe the structure of Central Portal and show example queries to demonstrate its capabilities.
  • 4.92
    Impact points
    Genomic structure of an economically important cyanobacterium, Arthrospira (Spirulina) platensis NIES-39.

    Takatomo Fujisawa, Rei Narikawa, Shinobu Okamoto, Shigeki Ehira, Hidehisa Yoshimura, Iwane Suzuki, Tatsuru Masuda, Mari Mochimaru, Shinichi Takaichi, Koichiro Awai, [......], Seiha Omata, Hiromi Takarada, Yoko Katano, Hiroki Kosugi, Satoshi Tanikawa, Kazuko Ohmori, Naoki Sato, Masahiko Ikeuchi, Nobuyuki Fujita, Masayuki Ohmori

    DNA research : an international journal for rapid publication of reports on genes and genomes. 03/2010; 17(2):85-103.

    A filamentous non-N(2)-fixing cyanobacterium, Arthrospira (Spirulina) platensis, is an important organism for industrial applications and as a food supply. Almost the complete genome of A. platensis NIES-39 was determined in this study. The genome structure of A. platensis is estimated to be a singl... [more] A filamentous non-N(2)-fixing cyanobacterium, Arthrospira (Spirulina) platensis, is an important organism for industrial applications and as a food supply. Almost the complete genome of A. platensis NIES-39 was determined in this study. The genome structure of A. platensis is estimated to be a single, circular chromosome of 6.8 Mb, based on optical mapping. Annotation of this 6.7 Mb sequence yielded 6630 protein-coding genes as well as two sets of rRNA genes and 40 tRNA genes. Of the protein-coding genes, 78% are similar to those of other organisms; the remaining 22% are currently unknown. A total 612 kb of the genome comprise group II introns, insertion sequences and some repetitive elements. Group I introns are located in a protein-coding region. Abundant restriction-modification systems were determined. Unique features in the gene composition were noted, particularly in a large number of genes for adenylate cyclase and haemolysin-like Ca(2+)-binding proteins and in chemotaxis proteins. Filament-specific genes were highlighted by comparative genomic analysis.
  • 7.48
    Impact points
    CyanoBase: the cyanobacteria genome database update 2010.

    Mitsuteru Nakao, Shinobu Okamoto, Mitsuyo Kohara, Tsunakazu Fujishiro, Takatomo Fujisawa, Shusei Sato, Satoshi Tabata, Takakazu Kaneko, Yasukazu Nakamura

    Nucleic acids research. 10/2009;

    CyanoBase (http://genome.kazusa.or.jp/cyanobase) is the genome database for cyanobacteria, which are model organisms for photosynthesis. The database houses cyanobacteria species information, complete genome sequences, genome-scale experiment data, gene information, gene annotations and mutant infor... [more] CyanoBase (http://genome.kazusa.or.jp/cyanobase) is the genome database for cyanobacteria, which are model organisms for photosynthesis. The database houses cyanobacteria species information, complete genome sequences, genome-scale experiment data, gene information, gene annotations and mutant information. In this version, we updated these datasets and improved the navigation and the visual display of the data views. In addition, a web service API now enables users to retrieve the data in various formats with other tools, seamlessly.
  • 3.94
    Impact points
    Complete genome sequence of the soil actinomycete Kocuria rhizophila.

    Hiromi Takarada, Mitsuo Sekine, Hiroki Kosugi, Yasunori Matsuo, Takatomo Fujisawa, Seiha Omata, Emi Kishi, Ai Shimizu, Naofumi Tsukatani, Satoshi Tanikawa, Nobuyuki Fujita, Shigeaki Harayama

    Journal of bacteriology. 07/2008; 190(12):4139-46.

    The soil actinomycete Kocuria rhizophila belongs to the suborder Micrococcineae, a divergent bacterial group for which only a limited amount of genomic information is currently available. K. rhizophila is also important in industrial applications; e.g., it is commonly used as a standard quality cont... [more] The soil actinomycete Kocuria rhizophila belongs to the suborder Micrococcineae, a divergent bacterial group for which only a limited amount of genomic information is currently available. K. rhizophila is also important in industrial applications; e.g., it is commonly used as a standard quality control strain for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Sequencing and annotation of the genome of K. rhizophila DC2201 (NBRC 103217) revealed a single circular chromosome (2,697,540 bp; G+C content of 71.16%) containing 2,357 predicted protein-coding genes. Most of the predicted proteins (87.7%) were orthologous to actinobacterial proteins, and the genome showed fairly good conservation of synteny with taxonomically related actinobacterial genomes. On the other hand, the genome seems to encode much smaller numbers of proteins necessary for secondary metabolism (one each of nonribosomal peptide synthetase and type III polyketide synthase), transcriptional regulation, and lateral gene transfer, reflecting the small genome size. The presence of probable metabolic pathways for the transformation of phenolic compounds generated from the decomposition of plant materials, and the presence of a large number of genes associated with membrane transport, particularly amino acid transporters and drug efflux pumps, may contribute to the organism's utilization of root exudates, as well as the tolerance to various organic compounds.
  • 5.50
    Impact points
    Sequence analysis of three plasmids harboured in Rhodococcus erythropolis strain PR4.

    Mitsuo Sekine, Satoshi Tanikawa, Seiha Omata, Mika Saito, Takatomo Fujisawa, Naofumi Tsukatani, Takahisa Tajima, Tomohiro Sekigawa, Hiroki Kosugi, Yasunori Matsuo, Rika Nishiko, Kohsuke Imamura, Mio Ito, Hitomi Narita, Shinichi Tago, Nobuyuki Fujita, Shigeaki Harayama

    Environmental microbiology. 03/2006; 8(2):334-46.

    Rhodococcus erythropolis strain PR4 has been isolated as an alkane-degrading bacterium. The strain harbours one linear plasmid, pREL1 (271 577 bp) and two circular plasmids, pREC1 (104 014 bp) and pREC2 (3637 bp), all with some sequence similarities to other Rhodococcus plasmids. For pREL1, pREC1 an... [more] Rhodococcus erythropolis strain PR4 has been isolated as an alkane-degrading bacterium. The strain harbours one linear plasmid, pREL1 (271 577 bp) and two circular plasmids, pREC1 (104 014 bp) and pREC2 (3637 bp), all with some sequence similarities to other Rhodococcus plasmids. For pREL1, pREC1 and pREC2, 298, 102 and 3 open reading frames, respectively, were predicted. Linear plasmid pREL1 has several regions homologous to plasmid pBD2 found in R. erythropolis BD2. Sequence analysis of pREL1 and pBD2 identified common metal-resistance genes on both, but pREL1 also encodes alkane-degradation genes not found on pBD2, with enzyme constituents some of which are quite different from those of other organisms. The alkane hydroxylase consisted of a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase, a 2Fe-2S ferredoxin, and a ferredoxin reductase. The ferredoxin reductase amino acid sequence resembles the AlkT (rubredoxin reductase) sequence. A zinc-containing alcohol dehydrogenase further oxydizes alkanols, alkane oxidation products catalysed by alkane hydroxylase. Of the circular plasmids, the pREC1 sequence is partially similar to the sequence of pREAT701, the virulence plasmid found in Rhodococcus equi. pREC1 has no pREAT701 virulence genes and encodes genes for beta-oxidation of fatty acids. Thus, joint actions of enzymes encoded by pREL1 and pREC1 may enable efficient mineralization of alkanes.
  • 0.96
    Impact points
    Use of segment-based microarray in the analysis of global gene expression in response to various environmental stresses in the cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. PCC 7120.

    Naoki Sato, Masayuki Ohmori, Masahiko Ikeuchi, Kousuke Tashiro, C Peter Wolk, Takakazu Kaneko, Katsuhiko Okada, Mikio Tsuzuki, Shigeki Ehira, Hiroshi Katoh, Shinobu Okamoto, Hidehisa Yoshimura, Takatomo Fujisawa, Ayako Kamei, Shizue Yoshihara, Rei Narikawa, Takashi Hamano, Satoshi Tabata, Satoshi Kuhara

    The Journal of general and applied microbiology. 03/2004; 50(1):1-8.

    We prepared microarrays that contain genomic sequences of a heterocyst-forming filamentous cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. PCC 7120. The complete genome of this cyanobacterium codes for about 5,368 protein-coding genes in the main chromosome of 6.4 Mbp. In total, 2,407 DNA segments were selected from th... [more] We prepared microarrays that contain genomic sequences of a heterocyst-forming filamentous cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. PCC 7120. The complete genome of this cyanobacterium codes for about 5,368 protein-coding genes in the main chromosome of 6.4 Mbp. In total, 2,407 DNA segments were selected from the sequencing clones, and amplified by PCR, then spotted on glass slides in duplicate. These microarrays differ from the widely used commercial or custom-made ones for other microorganisms in that each DNA segment was 3-4 kbp long, and contained about 3-4 predicted genes on average. This feature, however, did not decrease the usefulness of the microarrays, since we were able to detect a number of potentially novel genes that are induced in response to nitrogen deprivation, low temperature and drought. In addition, we found some genomic regions in which dozens of contiguous genes are simultaneously regulated. These results suggest that these segment-based microarrays are useful especially for such large genomes as Anabaena, for which the number of genes exceeds either technical or practical limitations.
  • Characterization of Genes Encoding Multi-domain Proteins in the Genome of the Filamentous Nitrogen-fixing Cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. Strain PCC 7120

    Masayuki Ohmori, Masahiko Ikeuchi, Naoki Sato, Peter Wolk, Takakazu Kaneko, Teruo Ogawa, Minoru Kanehisa, Susumu Goto, Shuichi Kawashima, Shinobu Okamoto, Hidehisa Yoshimura, Hiroshi Katoh, Takatomo Fujisawa, Shigeki Ehira, Ayako Kamei, Shizue Yoshihara, Rei Narikawa, Satoshi Tabata

    Computational analysis of gene structures in the genome of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 revealed the presence of a large number of genes encoding proteins with multiple functional domains. This was most evident in the genes for signal transduction pathway and the related systems. Comparison of the putative... [more] Computational analysis of gene structures in the genome of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 revealed the presence of a large number of genes encoding proteins with multiple functional domains. This was most evident in the genes for signal transduction pathway and the related systems. Comparison of the putative amino acid sequences of the gene products with those in the Pfam database indicated that GAF and PAS domains which may be involved in signal recognition were extremely abundant in Anabaena: 87 GAF domains in 62 ORFs and 140 PAS domains in 59 ORFs. As for the two-component signal transduction system, 73, 53, and 77 genes for simple sensory His kinases, hybrid His kinases and simple response regulators, respectively, many of which contained additional domains of diverse functions, were presumptively assigned. A total of 52 ORFs encoding putative Hanks-type Ser/Thr protein kinases with various domains such as WD-repeat, GAF and His kinase domains, as well as genes for presumptive protein phosphatases, were also identified. In addition, genes for putative transcription factors and for proteins in the cAMP signal transduction system harbored complex gene structures with multiple domains.

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