Diversity in protein domain superfamilies.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Das S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4686048 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Diversity in protein domain superfamilies.
Das Sayoni S Dawson Natalie L NL Orengo Christine A CA
Current opinion in genetics & development 20151103
Whilst ∼93% of domain superfamilies appear to be relatively structurally and functionally conserved based on the available data from the CATH-Gene3D domain classification resource, the remainder are much more diverse. In this review, we consider how domains in some of the most ubiquitous and promiscuous superfamilies have evolved, in particular the plasticity in their functional sites and surfaces which expands the repertoire of molecules they interact with and actions performed on them. To what ...[more]
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Project description:BackgroundRelated protein domains of a superfamily can be specified by proteins of diverse lengths. The structural and functional implications of indels in a domain scaffold have been examined.MethodologyIn this study, domain superfamilies with large length variations (more than 30% difference from average domain size, referred as 'length-deviant' superfamilies and 'length-rigid' domain superfamilies (<10% length difference from average domain size) were analyzed for the functional impact of such structural differences. Our delineated dataset, derived from an objective algorithm, enables us to address indel roles in the presence of peculiar structural repeats, functional variation, protein-protein interactions and to examine 'domain contexts' of proteins tolerant to large length variations. Amongst the top-10 length-deviant superfamilies analyzed, we found that 80% of length-deviant superfamilies possess distant internal structural repeats and nearly half of them acquired diverse biological functions. In general, length-deviant superfamilies have higher chance, than length-rigid superfamilies, to be engaged in internal structural repeats. We also found that approximately 40% of length-deviant domains exist as multi-domain proteins involving interactions with domains from the same or other superfamilies. Indels, in diverse domain superfamilies, were found to participate in the accretion of structural and functional features amongst related domains. With specific examples, we discuss how indels are involved directly or indirectly in the generation of oligomerization interfaces, introduction of substrate specificity, regulation of protein function and stability.ConclusionsOur data suggests a multitude of roles for indels that are specialized for domain members of different domain superfamilies. These specialist roles that we observe and trends in the extent of length variation could influence decision making in modeling of new superfamily members. Likewise, the observed limits of length variation, specific for each domain superfamily would be particularly relevant in the choice of alignment length search filters commonly applied in protein sequence analysis.
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Project description:We present, to our knowledge, the first quantitative analysis of functional site diversity in homologous domain superfamilies. Different types of functional sites are considered separately. Our results show that most diverse superfamilies are very plastic in terms of the spatial location of their functional sites. This is especially true for protein-protein interfaces. In contrast, we confirm that catalytic sites typically occupy only a very small number of topological locations. Small-ligand binding sites are more diverse than expected, although in a more limited manner than protein-protein interfaces. In spite of the observed diversity, our results also confirm the previously reported preferential location of functional sites. We identify a subset of homologous domain superfamilies where diversity is particularly extreme, and discuss possible reasons for such plasticity, i.e. structural diversity. Our results do not contradict previous reports of preferential co-location of sites among homologues, but rather point at the importance of not ignoring other sites, especially in large and diverse superfamilies. Data on sites exploited by different relatives, within each well annotated domain superfamily, has been made accessible from the CATH website in order to highlight versatile superfamilies or superfamilies with highly preferential sites. This information is valuable for system biology and knowledge of any constraints on protein interactions could help in understanding the dynamic control of networks in which these proteins participate. The novelty of our work lies in the comprehensive nature of the analysis - we have used a significantly larger dataset than previous studies - and the fact that in many superfamilies we show that different parts of the domain surface are exploited by different relatives for ligand/protein interactions, particularly in superfamilies which are diverse in sequence and structure, an observation not previously reported on such a large scale. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: The emerging dynamic view of proteins: Protein plasticity in allostery, evolution and self-assembly.
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Project description:Computational approaches that can predict protein functions are essential to bridge the widening function annotation gap especially since <1.0% of all proteins in UniProtKB have been experimentally characterized. We present a domain-based method for protein function classification and prediction of functional sites that exploits functional sub-classification of CATH superfamilies. The superfamilies are sub-classified into functional families (FunFams) using a hierarchical clustering algorithm supervised by a new classification method, FunFHMMer.FunFHMMer generates more functionally coherent groupings of protein sequences than other domain-based protein classifications. This has been validated using known functional information. The conserved positions predicted by the FunFams are also found to be enriched in known functional residues. Moreover, the functional annotations provided by the FunFams are found to be more precise than other domain-based resources. FunFHMMer currently identifies 110,439 FunFams in 2735 superfamilies which can be used to functionally annotate>16 million domain sequences.All FunFam annotation data are made available through the CATH webpages (http://www.cathdb.info). The FunFHMMer webserver (http://www.cathdb.info/search/by_funfhmmer) allows users to submit query sequences for assignment to a CATH FunFam.sayoni.das.12@ucl.ac.ukSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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