Insulin, discovered in 1921 by Nicolae Paulescu, and adiponectin, discovered in 1995 by Yuji Matsuzawa's and two other groups, are two important molecules related to the maintenance of human energy homeostasis. The close relationship of these two hormones in the development of metabolic pathology (obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus) prompted us to use a bioinformatic approach in order to better understand the architecture of their gene promoters. In this study, a comprehensive analysis was undertaken for adiponectin (ADIPOQ) and insulin (INS) gene promoter sequences from 7 species. In our approach we used 14 promoter sequences (7 promoters for each gene) from HomoloGene (NCBI). In order to examine the structural particularities of ADIPOQ and INS gene promoters, we used two-dimensional image-based patterns obtained through Kappa Index of Coincidence (Kappa IC) and (C+G)% values. We observed that C+G content variations of ADIPOQ promoter correlates with body mass, whereas high Kappa IC values of the INS gene promoter appear to be correlated with brain size.
Adipobiology 2012; 4: 111-115.
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