BMC Genomics BioMed Central Research article Open Access Characterization of the prohormone complement in cattle using genomic libraries and cleavage prediction approaches Bruce R Southey*1,2, Sandra L Rodriguez-Zas2 and Jonathan V Sweedler1 Address: 1Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA and 2Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana IL, USA Email: Bruce R Southey* -
[email protected]; Sandra L Rodriguez-Zas -
[email protected]; Jonathan V Sweedler -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 16 May 2009 Received: 10 December 2008 Accepted: 16 May 2009 BMC Genomics 2009, 10:228 doi:10.1186/1471-2164-10-228 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/10/228 © 2009 Southey et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Neuropeptides are cell to cell signalling molecules that regulate many critical biological processes including development, growth and reproduction. These peptides result from the complex processing of prohormone proteins, making their characterization both challenging and resource demanding. In fact, only 42 neuropeptide genes have been empirically confirmed in cattle. Neuropeptide research using high-throughput technologies such as microarray and mass spectrometry require accurate annotation of prohormone genes and products. However, the annotation and associated prediction efforts, when based solely on sequence homology to species with known neuropeptides, can be problematic. Results: Complementary bioinformatic resources were integrated in the first survey of the cattle neuropeptide complement.