title: Analyses of domains and domain fusions in human proto-oncogenes.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Understanding the constituent domains of oncogenes, their origins and their fusions may shed new light about the initiation and the development of cancers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We have developed a computational pipeline for identification of functional domains of human genes, prediction of the origins of these domains and their major fusion events during evolution through integration of existing and new tools of our own. An application of the pipeline to 124 well-characterized human oncogenes has led to the identification of a collection of domains and domain pairs that occur substantially more frequently in oncogenes than in human genes on average. Most of these enriched domains and domain pairs are related to tyrosine kinase activities. In addition, our analyses indicate that a substantial portion of the domain-fusion events of oncogenes took place in metazoans during evolution.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We expect that the computational pipeline for domain identification, domain origin and domain fusion prediction will prove to be useful for studying other groups of genes.
authors.affiliation: Computational Systems Biology Laboratory, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA. qiliu@csbl.bmb.uga.edu
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Jinling
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Huiqing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.forename: Xiuzi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D030562:Databases, Protein; D006801:Humans; D015514:Oncogene Proteins, Fusion / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D011519:Proto-Oncogenes
chemical_list: D015514:Oncogene Proteins, Fusion