Section: Application Domains

Function and history of genomes

Yeasts provide an ideal subject matter for the study of eukaryotic microorganisms. From an experimental standpoint, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a model organism amenable to laboratory use and very widely exploited, resulting in an astonishing array of experimental results. From a genomic standpoint, yeasts from the hemiascomycete class provide a unique tool for studying eukaryotic genome evolution on a large scale. With their relatively small and compact genomes, yeasts offer a unique opportunity to explore eukaryotic genome evolution by comparative analysis of several species. MAGNOME applies its methods for comparative genomics and knowledge engineering to the yeasts through the ten-year old Génolevures program (GDR 2354 CNRS), devoted to large-scale comparisons of yeast genomes with the aim of addressing basic questions of molecular evolution.

We developed the software tools used by the CNRS's http://www.genolevures.org/ web site. For example, Magnome 's Magus system for simultaneous genome annotation combines semi-supervised classification and rule-based inference in a collaborative web-based system that explicitly uses comparative genomics to simultaneously analyse groups of related genomes.