Book Description

Scientific Study from the year 2017 in the subject Medicine - Biomedical Engineering, University of Salford (School of Environmental and Life Sciences , ELLS), course: MSc Biomedical Science, language: English, abstract: Bioinformatics and computational biology provide us with the tools to collect, curate and analyse biological data and have seen increased usage in medicine and other scientific fields over the years. One of those areas of medicine where it is widely applied is in cancer research and chemotherapy. This report seeks to explore the properties and interactions of one gene, p53, which can be key to cancer research. This gene encodes the p53 protein which works by stopping cell cycle progression and hence preventing uncontrolled cell proliferation. It is also involved in activating the transcription of DNA repair proteins and inducing apoptosis. The interactions between p53 and a host of other genes involved in the regulation of transcription was studied with the aid of several databases; NCBI Gene ,MotifMap, ChampionChip ,TRED, STRING and a visualization software , Cytoscape, with which a Boolean model was produced from ten p53 interactions. p21 is a very important gene which is regulated by p53 in its transcriptional activation and tumour suppressing function .A study of some of the properties of p21 (with NCBI Gene) and a comparison of the of the number of transcription factors which regulate p21 was done using MofiMap, ChampionChip and TRED and found to be higher for ChampionChip which provided a more extensive search than MotifMap. Meanwhile TRED produced no results for gene search. In conclusion, the report demonstrated that the usually very complex network of p53 interactions can be simplified by a Boolean model to show the transcription factors regulated by p53 and the nature of interaction (activation or inhibition). Understanding these pathways of interactions might be very useful in cancer research and treatment.