Bioinformatic Analysis of cDNA Clones from Human Y Chromosome

Maleness in humans is determined by the presence or absence of the Y chromosome, which encodes the SRY (sex-determining region of Y) gene necessary for testis development. The human Y chromosome contains a large sex and species-specific heterochromatic block on the distal end of its long arm. There may be some genes hitherto unexplored in the heterochromatic region of the human Y chromosome. The present study investigates the significance of the distal Yq heterochromatic block of human Y chromosome by experimental and computational methods. The present study was carried out in two parts. One part included sequencing of the 10-cDNA clones. The other part which is also the main part of this book included bioinformatics analysis of the sequences of the clones. Sequencing of the clones was done by PCR-Sequencing. Bioinformatics analysis was done using several programs such as, NCBI BLAST, CLUSTAL W, GeneSplicer, NatGene2, Genscan etc. Bio-informatics analysis of the experimental results showed a clear evidence of transcription from both strands by both the cDNA clones found by our lab in the distal heterochromatic block of the long arm of human Y chromosome.