Present Scenario of Algal-Omics: A Mini Review

Abstract

Algae are found everywhere on earth, in the sea, rivers and lakes, on soil and walls, in animal and plants (as symbionts-partners collaborating together), in fact just about everywhere where there is a light to carry out photosynthesis. Algal bioinformatics, as the name suggests is the application of information technology to decipher more algae information with the aid of computational tools and softwares. Fundamental biological processes can now be studied by applying the full range of omics technologies viz genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics. There are plenty of problems and challenges associated with algal species, in which one is poor representation in genomic and proteomic databases, lies mostly in the lack of information regarding the cellular functions of the proteins identified. Recently, fast progress has been made in 2-DE methodology for marine algae. More recent studies have shown that 2-DE results are useful for analysis of the phylogenetic relationships among closely related species of algae. List of algal genomes are already sequenced. Some genomics and proteomics are briefly summarized.