Tool to better study bacterial genes

Researchers at Texas A&M University have developed a computational tool which allows scientists to analyze many bacterial genomes at once and it is more accurate than previous methods. The tool could hlep us more accurately study bacterial operons.

Operons are units of clustered genes with similar functions that are in bacteria controlled by the same promoter. Scientists want to understand how the genes in the operons are organized and how the operons function. The new computational method allows researchers to analyze many bacterial genomes at the same time. It is also more accurate than previous methods in which scientists start by simply using a statistical method to predict the location of an operon in a bacterial genome. The study was published in the journal Genome Research.

Source: http://dmc-news.tamu.edu