Production and sequence validation of a complete full length ORF collection for the pathogenic bacterium Vibrio cholerae.

Cholera, an infectious disease with global impact, is caused by pathogenic strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. High-throughput functional proteomics technologies now offer the opportunity to investigate all aspects of the proteome, which has led to an increased demand for comprehensive protein expression clone resources. Genome-scale reagents for cholera would encourage comprehensive analyses of immune responses and systems-wide functional studies that could lead to improved vaccine and therapeutic strategies. Here, we report the production of the FLEXGene clone set for V. cholerae O1 biovar eltor str. N16961: a complete-genome collection of ORF clones. This collection includes 3,761 sequence-verified clones from 3,887 targeted ORFs (97%). The ORFs were captured in a recombinational cloning vector to facilitate high-throughput transfer of ORF inserts into suitable expression vectors. To demonstrate its application, approximately 15% of the collection was transferred into the relevant expression vector and used to produce a protein microarray by transcribing, translating, and capturing the proteins in situ on the array surface with 92% success. In a second application, a method to screen for protein triggers of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) was developed. We tested in vitro-synthesized proteins for their ability to stimulate TLR5 in A549 cells. This approach appropriately identified FlaC, and previously uncharacterized TLR5 agonist activities. These data suggest that the genome-scale, fully sequenced ORF collection reported here will be useful for high-throughput functional proteomic assays, immune response studies, structure biology, and other applications.

A novel approach to sequence validating protein expression clones with automated decision making.

BACKGROUND: Whereas the molecular assembly of protein expression clones is readily automated and routinely accomplished in high throughput, sequence verification of these clones is still largely performed manually, an arduous and time consuming process. The ultimate goal of validation is to determine if a given plasmid clone matches its reference sequence sufficiently to be "acceptable" for use in protein expression experiments. Given the accelerating increase in availability of tens of thousands of unverified clones, there is a strong demand for rapid, efficient and accurate software that automates clone validation. RESULTS: We have developed an Automated Clone Evaluation (ACE) system - the first comprehensive, multi-platform, web-based plasmid sequence verification software package. ACE automates the clone verification process by defining each clone sequence as a list of multidimensional discrepancy objects, each describing a difference between the clone and its expected sequence including the resulting polypeptide consequences. To evaluate clones automatically, this list can be compared against user acceptance criteria that specify the allowable number of discrepancies of each type. This strategy allows users to re-evaluate the same set of clones against different acceptance criteria as needed for use in other experiments. ACE manages the entire sequence validation process including contig management, identifying and annotating discrepancies, determining if discrepancies correspond to polymorphisms and clone finishing. Designed to manage thousands of clones simultaneously, ACE maintains a relational database to store information about clones at various completion stages, project processing parameters and acceptance criteria. In a direct comparison, the automated analysis by ACE took less time and was more accurate than a manual analysis of a 93 gene clone set. CONCLUSION: ACE was designed to facilitate high throughput clone sequence verification projects. The software has been used successfully to evaluate more than 55,000 clones at the Harvard Institute of Proteomics. The software dramatically reduced the amount of time and labor required to evaluate clone sequences and decreased the number of missed sequence discrepancies, which commonly occur during manual evaluation. In addition, ACE helped to reduce the number of sequencing reads needed to achieve adequate coverage for making decisions on clones.

Approaching a complete repository of sequence-verified protein-encoding clones for Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The availability of an annotated genome sequence for the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has made possible the proteome-scale study of protein function and protein-protein interactions. These studies rely on availability of cloned open reading frame (ORF) collections that can be used for cell-free or cell-based protein expression. Several yeast ORF collections are available, but their use and data interpretation can be hindered by reliance on now out-of-date annotations, the inflexible presence of N- or C-terminal tags, and/or the unknown presence of mutations introduced during the cloning process. High-throughput biochemical and genetic analyses would benefit from a "gold standard" (fully sequence-verified, high-quality) ORF collection, which allows for high confidence in and reproducibility of experimental results. Here, we describe Yeast FLEXGene, a S. cerevisiae protein-coding clone collection that covers over 5000 predicted protein-coding sequences. The clone set covers 87% of the current S. cerevisiae genome annotation and includes full sequencing of each ORF insert. Availability of this collection makes possible a wide variety of studies from purified proteins to mutation suppression analysis, which should contribute to a global understanding of yeast protein function.

PlasmID: a centralized repository for plasmid clone information and distribution.

The Plasmid Information Database (PlasmID; http://plasmid.hms.harvard.edu) was developed as a community-based resource portal to facilitate search and request of plasmid clones shared with the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) DNA Resource Core. PlasmID serves as a central data repository and enables researchers to search the collection online using common gene names and identifiers, keywords, vector features, author names and PubMed IDs. As of October 2006, the repository contains >46 000 plasmids in 98 different vectors, including cloned cDNA and genomic fragments from 26 different species. Moreover, the clones include plasmid vectors useful for routine and cutting-edge techniques; functionally related sets of human cDNA clones; and genome-scale gene collections for Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Bacillus anthracis and Vibrio cholerae. Information about the plasmids has been fully annotated in adherence with a high-quality standard, and clone samples are stored as glycerol stocks in a state-of-the-art automated -80 degrees C freezer storage system. Clone replication and distribution is highly automated to minimize human error. Infor-mation about vectors and plasmid clones, including downloadable maps and sequence data, is freely available online. Researchers interested in requesting clone samples or sharing their own plasmids with the repository can visit the PlasmID website for more information.