The Molecular Ancestry Network (MANET) database is a
bioinformatics
Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
that maps evolutionary relationships of protein architectures directly onto biological networks. It was originally developed by Hee Shin Kim, Jay E. Mittenthal and
Gustavo Caetano-Anolles
Gustavo Caetano-Anollés is Professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an expert in the field of evolutionary and comparative genomics.
Biography
; Studies and early researche ...
in the Department of Crop Sciences of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
.
MANET traces for example the ancestry of individual metabolic enzymes in
metabolism
Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cell ...
with bioinformatic, phylogenetic, and statistical methods. MANET currently links information in the Structural Classification of Proteins (
SCOP
A (
or ) was a poet as represented in Old English poetry. The scop is the Old English counterpart of the Old Norse ', with the important difference that "skald" was applied to historical persons, and scop is used, for the most part, to designa ...
) database, the metabolic pathways database of the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (
KEGG
KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) is a collection of databases dealing with genomes, biological pathways, diseases, drugs, and chemical substances. KEGG is utilized for bioinformatics research and education, including data analysis i ...
), and phylogenetic reconstructions describing the evolution of protein fold architecture at a universal level. The database has been updated to reflect evolution of metabolism at the level of protein fold families. MANET literally "paints" the ancestries of enzymes derived from rooted phylogenetic trees directly onto over one hundred metabolic pathways representations, paying homage to one of the fathers of
impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
. It also provides numerous functionalities that enable searching specific protein folds with defined ancestry values, displaying the distribution of enzymes that are painted, and exploring quantitative details describing individual protein folds. This permits the study of global and local metabolic network architectures, and the extraction of evolutionary patterns at global and local levels.
A statistical analysis of the data in MANET showed for example a patchy distribution of ancestry values assigned to protein folds in each subnetwork, indicating that evolution of metabolism occurred globally by widespread recruitment of enzymes.
[ MANET was used recently to sort out enzymatic recruitment processes in metabolic networks and propose that modern metabolism originated in the ]purine
Purine is a heterocyclic compound, heterocyclic aromatic organic compound that consists of two rings (pyrimidine and imidazole) fused together. It is water-soluble. Purine also gives its name to the wider class of molecules, purines, which includ ...
nucleotide metabolic subnetwork.evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
.
External links
Molecular Ancestry Network (MANET) database
References
{{reflist, 2
Biological databases