As each newly sequenced genome contains a significant number of protein-coding ORFs that are species-, family- or lineage-specific, many interesting questions arise about the evolution and role of these ORFs and of the genomes they are part of. We refer to these poorly conserved ORFs as singleton or paralogous ORFans if they are unique to one genome, or as orthologous ORFans if they appear only in a family of closely related organisms and have no homolog in other genomes. In order to study and classify ORFans we have constructed the ORFanage, an ORFan database. This database consists of the predicted ORFs in fully sequenced microbial genomes, and enables searching for the three types of ORFans in any subset of the genomes chosen by the user. The ORFanage could help in choosing interesting targets for further genomic and evolutionary studies. The ORFanage is accessible via http://www.bioinformatics.buffalo. edu/ORFanage.

We apply genetic programming to the evolution of strategies for playing the game of backgammon. We explore two different strategies of learning: using a fixed external opponent as teacher, and letting the individuals play against each other. We conclude that the second approach is better and leads to excellent results: Pitted in a 1000-game tournament against a standard benchmark player-Pubeval-our best evolved program wins 62.4% of the games, the highest result to date. Moreover, several other evolved programs attain win percentages not far behind the champion, evidencing the repeatability of our approach.

No abstract

No abstract