In an ongoing collaboration with Dr. L. Staudt, NCI, an attempt is being made to discover novel human lymphoid-specific genes by automated DNA sequencing of subtracted cDNA libraries. Software tools developed by DCRT are used to process and place the data into a SYBASE relational database system. These include tools for prescreening cDNA sequence against a local database, automated searching against the nonredundant databases on the NCBI network BLAST server, providing display of the results, and allowing user interaction to select information to be placed into the SYBASE database. Work is under way to provide software to perform complex motif pattern matching analyses, such as searches for nuclear localization signals, on the cDNA sequences. This software, based on Genobase and its associated toolkit, will permit automated incorporation of results into the SYBASE database, with a graphical user interface for input and editing of search parameters. To date, thousands of cDNA sequences have been analyzed, yielding homologies to a variety of proteins, including transcriptional regulators, signal transduction proteins and membrane receptors. Work is in progress to expand the scope of the database to include laboratory management information and data from other sources, such as northern blots.
