"Junk Gene" Database Harvests Global Geneticists " Fans"

", if our genetic information is a mountain, geneticists know that there is gold in the mountain, but they use a hoe. Our job is to create 'miners' for them, to help them dig out the gold faster, and to show what we've dug up and build it into a repository for them to use. Yin Jing, a professor at the School of Information and the School of Biomedical and Health Sciences at Huahua Agricultural University, explains their research in this way.
's team recently published three articles in the British journal Nucleic Acid Research. By conducting an in-depth analysis of the function of genetic variation in a variety of cancers, they found a large number of genetic variation points that regulate non-coding nucleotides (ncRNAs) and selective polynucleotides (APA), built an online database, and made them available to researchers around the world.
" one of the databases has been online for more than a month and has been visited 1446 times in 22 countries! In an interview with Science and Technology Daily, she said she was pleased that her research would win over fans around the world., who explained one of the studies in detail, said: "Expressing quantitative symptoms (eQTL) refers to genetically modified bits in the genome that can affect gene expression. eQTL analysis is one of the important methods to analyze genetic function and find pathogenic genes, and has been widely used in genetic research. The
are divided into encoded and non-encoded genes. However, most of the current research focuses on eQTL identification related to encoding genes, and there are very few non-coding-related eQTL system analyses. Non-coding is larger than encoding genetic data, says Jing. Ten years ago people thought it didn't matter, even some people called it the "junk gene", but now it has been found to have more and more functions, even involved in the development of cancer.
, who has been engaged in bio-information technology research for many years, saw the lack of non-coding-related eQTL system analysis a year ago and decided to lead the team to fill the gap. Using genomic and non-coding expression information from nearly 10,000 samples of the Cancer Genome Map (TCGA), they systematically analyzed the relationship between genetic variation and non-coding expression in 33 cancers.
through large samples and multi-group analysis, they identified more than 6 million shun eQTLs and more than 700,000 trans eQTLs associated with long non-coding in 33 cancers. After further correlation and analysis of identified eQTLs and cancer patient survival information, they identified 8,235 long non-coding RNA-eQTLs and 116 microRNAs-eQTLs associated with the patient's total survival time.
, they built an online database. On this website, other researchers can easily browse and query a variety of cancer-related eQTL data.
These eQTL data will help to understand how genetic risk all-like genes promote tumor occurrence and development, help geneticists better understand the role of non-coding genes in cancer progression and biological processes, and provide new ideas for the development of potential cancer targets.the background of this scientific doctor and doctor's choice of bio-information, so that Jing Jing has more interdisciplinary thinking. She believes that an important responsibility of biopicists is to provide biologists and geneticists, as well as clinicians, with more convenient tools and data resources.
"Because there is very little research on non-coding-related eQTL, which means that there are fewer research methods available for our reference, so the choice of methods, data collection and analysis, the construction of relevant databases, etc. need us to know the difficulties." To increase the credibility and viability of our research, we use esolysed samples and survival information from professional cancer databases, which are industry-certified and reliable data. "
in database construction, how to reflect professional science at the same time make users easy to understand?" It took them a lot of time. They have changed versions, from color matching, typography, and content padding to providing other researchers with an intuitive database and doing their best to present the characteristics of a professional database.
their genetic research methods can be used not only for cancer but also for other diseases. At the same time, it can be extended to the study of animals and plants. Recently, they built genome reference panels for 13 species and created a database for filling animal genetic data by collecting and processing animal genome sequencing data extensively. This database can be widely used in animal genetic breeding and quality improvement and other research. The data in the database and the tools provided can greatly save the cost and time of research and greatly improve the efficiency of scientific research.
said they will continue to maintain and continuously update the databases at a later stage, hoping to benefit more researchers. In addition, they are considering further deepening their research based on developed databases and identified potentially functional genetic points.
Specifically, the results obtained by bio-information methods and population molecular epidemiology, molecular biology combined to dig deep into the function of genetic site, hope that through
-degree analysis to find and identify a certain cancer-related biomarkers or drug targets, and truly achieve the combination of industry and research, promote clinical biomedical practice, so as to benefit the public.