FIND ARTICLE

Volume: 
Issue: 
4
Date of issue: 
Rapid progress of biological and medical research depends largely on steadily growing informa- tion in online databases and its accessibility for researchers. All centers involved in the collection of nucleotide and aminoacid sequences exchange and update available data. Full benefit from this information may be obtained only by proper analysis provided by several bioinformatic services. In their formation people from broad scientific community are engaged and their effects of work are accessible free of charge in internet. This software permits to analyze collected data in various aspects. For example, properties of neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) depend a lot on multiple posttranscriptional and posttranslational modifications. Bioinformatic approach allows to assess their significance. Due to bioinformatic tools it was shown that NCAM may theoretically possess 40 up to 46 exons, while genetic screening indicated 20 only. Application of Spidey software revealed novel data about VASE exon, showing links with decreased brain plasticity. Other tools permitted to obtain details about NCAM protein formation in the cell, its transmembrane and soluble forms as well as tertiary structure and its possible modifications. I was also shown that NCAM is able to intracytoplasmic signal transduction and emphasized the role of protein phosphorylation in this process. This will make possible to determine precisely the role of NCAM molecule both in health and disease.

The Editorial Board
Andrzej Łukaszyk - przewodniczący, Zofia Bielańska-Osuchowska, Szczepan Biliński, Mieczysław Chorąży, Aleksander Koj, Włodzimierz Korochoda, Leszek Kuźnicki, Aleksandra Stojałowska, Lech Wojtczak

Editorial address:
Katedra i Zakład Histologii i Embriologii Uniwersytetu Medycznego w Poznaniu, ul. Święcickiego 6, 60-781 Poznań, tel. +48 61 8546453, fax. +48 61 8546440, email: mnowicki@ump.edu.pl

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