Comparative and functional analysis of cardiovascular-related genes

The ability to detect putative cis-regulatory elements in cardiovascular-related genes has been accelerated by the availability of genomic sequence data from numerous vertebrate species and the recent development of comparative genomic tools. This improvement is anticipated to lead to a better understanding of the complex regulatory architecture of cardiovascular (CV) genes and how genetic variants in these non-coding regions can potentially play a role in cardiovascular disease. This manuscript reviews a recently established database dedicated to the comparative sequence analysis of 250 human CV genes of known importance, 37 of which currently contain sequence comparison data for organisms beyond those of human, mouse and rat. These data have provided a glimpse into the variety of possible insights from deep vertebrate sequence comparisons and the identification of putative gene regulatory elements.