HomoloGene

HomoloGene is a service of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) that provides information on whether and which homologies exist for a particular gene in other species. The processing of the search queries is automatic and is a relatively reliable tool for analyzing the relationships between genes of different species.

functionality

The search engine only needs to enter an amino acid sequence. This is first examined with the help of the BLASTp system and compared with regard to homology criteria. The input sequence is compared with already known UniGene clusters.

The output of HomoloGene uses a tree structure in which the organisms are sorted from highest to lowest homology / orthology. The degree of homology is determined primarily on the basis of so-called conserved sequences . HomoloGene uses cdart technology here, which is also one of the BLAST tools.

In addition to already known genes, ortho or homologous sequences are calculated with the aid of an algorithm, which in turn are compared with the nucleotide sequences stored at UniGene .

Supported Species & a.

• Homo sapiens ( human )
• Mus musculus ( house mouse )
• Caenorhabditis elegans (a roundworm )
• Arabidopsis thaliana ( thale cress )
• Plasmodium falciparum ( malaria )
• Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly)