COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AND PROTEIN MODELING OF CYANOBACTERIA USING BIOINFORMATICS TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Abstract

Computational biology is a term coined from analogy to the role of physical sciences, is now coming into its own as a major element of contemporary biological and biomedical research. In the sharp in this pattern, over past few years, experiments in life sciences in the academic institutions have begun to recognize the value of bioinformatics and computational biology in the field of algology. Cyanobacteria (also known as blue–green algae) are a group of extraordinarily diverse Gram-negative prokaryotes that originated 3.5 billion years ago. After the advent of bioinformatics in the field of algology, complete genome sequences of Cyanobacteria have been reported in more than 30 species and strains including unicellular. The filamentous cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 (further referred to as Anabaena sp.) is a model system to study nitrogen fixation, cell differentiation, cell pattern formation and evolution of plastids. It is a multicellular photosynthetic microorganism consisting of two cell types, vegetative cells and nitrogen fixing heterocysts. The nucleotide sequence of the entire genome of a filamentous Cyanobacterium, Anabaena sp. Strain PCC 7120, was determined. This study focuses on the function and dynamics of the proteome of the Gram-negative outer membrane in Anabaena sp.