E10 is a new maturity locus in soybean and FT4 is the predicted/potential functional gene underlying the locus. Flowering and maturity time traits play crucial roles in economic soybean production. Early maturity is critical for north and west expansion of soybean in Canada. To date, 11 genes/loci have been identified which control time to flowering and maturity; however, the molecular bases of almost half of them are not yet clear. We have identified a new maturity locus called "E10" located at the end of chromosome Gm08. The gene symbol E10e10 has been approved by the Soybean Genetics Committee. The e10e10 genotype results in 5-10 days earlier maturity than E10E10. A set of presumed E10E10 and e10e10 genotypes was used to identify contrasting SSR and SNP haplotypes. These haplotypes, and their association with maturity, were maintained through five backcross generations. A functional genomics approach using a predicted protein-protein interaction (PPI) approach (Protein-protein Interaction Prediction Engine, PIPE) was used to investigate approximately 75 genes located in the genomic region that SSR and SNP analyses identified as the location of the E10 locus. The PPI analysis identified FT4 as the most likely candidate gene underlying the E10 locus. Sequence analysis of the two FT4 alleles identified three SNPs, in the 5'UTR, 3'UTR and fourth exon in the coding region, which result in differential mRNA structures. Allele-specific markers were developed for this locus and are available for soybean breeders to efficiently develop earlier maturing cultivars using molecular marker assisted breeding.

Large-scale proteomic analyses in Escherichia coli have documented the composition and physical relationships of multiprotein complexes, but not their functional organization into biological pathways and processes. Conversely, genetic interaction (GI) screens can provide insights into the biological role(s) of individual gene and higher order associations. Combining the information from both approaches should elucidate how complexes and pathways intersect functionally at a systems level. However, such integrative analysis has been hindered due to the lack of relevant GI data. Here we present a systematic, unbiased, and quantitative synthetic genetic array screen in E. coli describing the genetic dependencies and functional cross-talk among over 600,000 digenic mutant combinations. Combining this epistasis information with putative functional modules derived from previous proteomic data and genomic context-based methods revealed unexpected associations, including new components required for the biogenesis of iron-sulphur and ribosome integrity, and the interplay between molecular chaperones and proteases. We find that functionally-linked genes co-conserved among γ-proteobacteria are far more likely to have correlated GI profiles than genes with divergent patterns of evolution. Overall, examining bacterial GIs in the context of protein complexes provides avenues for a deeper mechanistic understanding of core microbial systems.

The presence of acetic acid during industrial alcohol fermentation reduces the yield of fermentation by imposing additional stress on the yeast cells. The biology of cellular responses to stress has been a subject of vigorous investigations. Although much has been learned, details of some of these responses remain poorly understood. Members of heat shock chaperone HSP proteins have been linked to acetic acid and heat shock stress responses in yeast. Both acetic acid and heat shock have been identified to trigger different cellular responses including reduction of global protein synthesis and induction of programmed cell death. Yeast HSC82 and HSP82 code for two important heat shock proteins that together account for 1–2% of total cellular proteins. Both proteins have been linked to responses to acetic acid and heat shock. In contrast to the overall rate of protein synthesis which is reduced, the expression of HSC82 and HSP82 is induced in response to acetic acid stress. In the current study we identified two yeast genes DOM34 and RPL36A that are linked to acetic acid and heat shock sensitivity. We investigated the influence of these genes on the expression of HSP proteins. Our observations suggest that Dom34 and RPL36A influence translation in a CAP-independent manner.

A goal of the post-genomics era has been to elucidate a detailed global map of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) within a cell. Here, we show that the presence of co-occurring short polypeptide sequences between interacting protein partners appears to be conserved across different organisms. We present an algorithm to automatically generate PPI prediction method parameters for various organisms and illustrate that global PPIs can be predicted from previously reported PPIs within the same or a different organism using protein primary sequences. The PPI prediction code is further accelerated through the use of parallel multi-core programming, which improves its usability for large scale or proteome-wide PPI prediction. We predict and analyze hundreds of novel human PPIs, experimentally confirm protein functions and importantly predict the first genome-wide PPI maps for S. pombe (∼9,000 PPIs) and C. elegans (∼37,500 PPIs).