OBJECTIVES: Since the first human infection from avian influenza was reported in Hong Kong in 1997, many Asian countries have confirmed outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza viruses. In addition to Asian countries, the EU authorities also held an urgent meeting in February 2006 at which it was agreed that Europe could also become the next target for H5N1 avian influenza in the near future. In this paper, we provide the general and applicable information on the avian influenza in the bioinformatics field to assist future studies in preventive medicine. METHODS: We introduced some up-to-date analytical tools in bioinformatics research, and discussed the current trends of avian influenza outbreaks. Among the bioinformatics methods, we focused our interests on two topics: attern analysis using the secondary database of avian influenza, and structural analysis using the molecular dynamics simulations in vaccine design. RESULTS: Use of the public genome databases available in the bioinformatics field enabled intensive analysis of the genetic patterns. Moreover, molecular dynamic simulations have also undergone remarkable development on the basis of the high performance supercomputing infrastructure these days. CONCLUSIONS: The bioinformatics techniques we introduced in this study may be useful in preventive medicine, especially in vaccine and drug discovery.
Proteomics ; Preventive Medicine ; Korea ; *Influenza in Birds ; *Influenza A Virus, H5N1 Subtype ; Computational Biology/*trends ; Birds ; Animals

Asthma is a chronic disease associated with airway constriction due to inflammation caused by eosinophils, mast cells, and T lymphocytes, leading to serious chronic illness in children. The eotaxin gene family has been shown to play an important role in the pathogenesis of asthma. We hypothesized that the distinctive variations among the four seasons in Korea may affect the expression of eotaxin polymorphisms, especially in children. We examined the possible effects of birth season (spring, March-May; summer, June-August; fall, September-November; and winter, December-February) on the phenotype of asthma in children. All SNP data sets of the eotaxin-2 and eotaxin-3 genes were collected from 78 asthma patients and 101 controls. Here, we investigated the effects of birth season on the expression of eotaxin-2 and eotaxin-3 in Korean children. Using the HAPLOTYPE procedure with the HTR method in SAS/Genetics, we showed that children born in spring and summer show significant haplotypes in both the eotaxin-2 and eotaxin-3 genes. Thus, the expression of polymorphisms in eotaxin-2 and eotaxin-3 may vary by season.
Asthma ; Chemokine CCL24 ; Child ; Chronic Disease ; Constriction ; Eosinophils ; Haplotypes ; Humans ; Inflammation ; Korea ; Mast Cells ; Parturition ; Phenotype ; Seasons ; T-Lymphocytes

Structural information has been a major concern for biological and pharmaceutical studies for its intimate relationship to the function of a protein. Three-dimensional representation of the positions of protein atoms is utilized among many structural information repositories that have been published. The reliability of the torsional system, which represents the native processes of structural change in the structural analysis, was partially proven with previous structural alignment studies. Here, a web server providing structural information and analysis based on the backbone torsional representation of a protein structure is newly introduced. The web server offers functions of secondary structure database search, secondary structure calculation, and pair-wise protein structure comparison, based on a backbone torsion angle representation system. Application of the implementation in pair-wise structural alignment showed highly accurate results. The information derived from this web server might be further utilized in the field of ab initio protein structure modeling or protein homology-related analyses.
Databases, Protein ; Protein Structure, Secondary