Abstract

The aim of the project is to identify and to annotate both the selenoproteins and the required machinery to synthetize them in Vipera berus, whose genome is fragmented in multiple contigs. In order to achieve it, the selenoproteomes of Anolis carolinensis and Vipera berus have been compared by homology.

In this study different bioinformatic tools and databases were used to get Vipera berus genome. A program was designed to automate the analysis of every possible selenoprotein. This program executes all the necessary steps to identify the selenoproteins: tBLASTn, Exonerate and T-coffee. Moreover, the presence of SECIS elements was also analyzed.

Interpretation of these results has allowed to predict the existence of 18 selenoproteins, 5 homologous and 9 machinery proteins.