Nucleic Acids Research, 2000, Vol. 28, No. 1 163-165
© 2000 Oxford University Press
MitoNuc and MitoAln: two related databases of nuclear genes coding for mitochondrial proteins
1Dipartimento di Fisiologia e Biochimica Generali, Università di Milano, via Celoria 26, 20122 Milano, Italy, 2Dipartimento di Biochimica e Biologia Molecolare, Università di Bari, via Orabona 4, 70126 Bari, Italy, 3Area di Ricerca di Bari, C.N.R., via Amendola 166/5, 70126 Bari, Italy and 4Centro di Studio sui Mitocondri e Metabolismo Energetico C.N.R., via Orabona 4, 70126 Bari, Italy
Mitochondria, besides their central role in energy metabolism, have recently been found to be involved in a number of basic processes of cell life and to contribute to the pathogenesis of many degenerative diseases. All functions of mitochondria depend on the interaction of nuclear and organellar genomes. Mitochondrial genomes have been extensively sequenced and analysed and the data collected in several specialised databases. In order to collect information on nuclear coded mitochondrial proteins we developed MitoNuc and MitoAln, two related databases containing, respectively, detailed information on sequenced nuclear genes coding for mitochondrial proteins in Metazoa and yeast, and the multiple alignments of the relevant homologous protein coding regions. MitoNuc and MitoAln retrieval through SRS at http://bio-www.ba.cnr.it:8000/srs6/ can easily allow the extraction of sequence data, subsequences defined by specific features and nucleotide or amino acid multiple alignments.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Dipartimento di Fisiologia e Biochimica Generali, Università di Milano, via Celoria 26, 20133 Milano, Italy. Tel. +39 02 70644803; Fax: +39 02 70632811; Email: graziano.pesole@unimi.it The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors