|
Poster 33. Congresso da Sociedade Brasileira de Toxinologia, 8., Symposium of the Pan American Section of the International Society on Toxinology, 8., 2004, Angra dos Reis, Brasil. Abstracts... J. Venom. Anim. Toxins incl.Trop. Dis., 2004, 10, 3, p.392. |
Amino Acid Sequence And Hidrophatics Index Based Method For Prediction Of Surface Patches Involved In Protein-Protein PLA2 Interactions Neurotoxins Of Bothropics And Crotalics Snake Venom.
Fagundes F.H.R., Ponce-Soto, L.A., Bonfim, V.L., Damico, D.C.S. and Marangoni. S.
Department of Biochemistry Institute of Biology - UNICAMP – BRAZIL.
The application of amino acid sequence comparisons to identify residues involved in the pharmacological activities of PLA2s toxins has been the objective of several previous studies. Eight amino acid sequences of Lys49 and Asp49 PLA2s present in the venoms of bothropics and crotalics were retrieved from the SWISSPROT and GeneBank database (National Center for Biotechnology Information), and aligned using the DNAstart multiple sequence alignment program. The second manual alignment was then made against the hidrophatics index and amino acid sequence of the Lys49 and Asp49 in order to correctly locate the position of amino acid insertions in the aligned sequences and hidrophatics index. The final sequence alignment was analyzed by scoring the amino acid substitutions at each position. Substitutions with positive scores values are considered to be those accepted during microevolution and were considered conservative substitutions. Conversely, those substitutions with negative scores are considered to be non-conservative substitutions are in the C-terminal region of the protein, whereas conservative substitutions are more evenly distributed throughout the protein structure. These results are in good agreement with study of neurotoxic activity also was demonstrated the importance of the C-terminal region as a determinant of biological activity. Furthermore the results suggest that the differences in biological activity between Lys49 PLA2 and Asp49 of the snake’s crotalics are caused by non-conservative substitutions. This simple sequence analysis and index hidrophatics is a rapid method to prediction of domains responsible for the effect neurotoxic.
Correspondence to: fabiofagundes@hotmail.com