A splice variant of the human phosphohistidine phosphatase 1 (PHPT1) is degraded by the proteasome.

Regulation of protein activity by phosphorylation is central in many cellular processes. Phosphorylation of serine, threonine and tyrosine residues is well documented and studied. In addition, other amino acids, like histidine can be phosphorylated, but neither the mechanism nor the function of this modification is well understood. Nevertheless, there is a 14 kDa enzyme with phosphohistidine phosphatase activity, named PHPT1, found in most animals, but not in bacteria, plant or fungi. There are a few splice variant transcripts formed from the human PHPT1 locus and some of them are predicted to form variant proteins, but studies of these proteins are lacking. In order to get insight into the possible function of the variant transcripts encoded at the PHPT1 locus, ectopic expression of PHPT1 transcript variant 6, predicted to be degraded by the non-sense mediated mRNA decay pathway, in HeLa cells was undertaken. In HeLa cells the splice variant protein was degraded by the proteasome, unlike the wild type protein. Using an in silico modeling approach the variant C-terminal end of the proteins were predicted to form different secondary structures that might explain the different properties of the two proteins. The specific degradation of the PHPT1 splice variant indicates that at least for the PHPT1 protein, the quality control and the self-guarding of the cellular system works at two levels, first at the RNA level, aberrant transcripts are degraded by the non-sense mediated mRNA decay pathway, and the small amount of proteins that are formed will be degraded by the proteasome.

Identification of potential drug targets by subtractive genome analysis of Bacillus anthracis A0248: An in silico approach.

BACKGROUND: Bacillus anthracis is a gram positive, spore forming, rod shaped bacteria which is the etiologic agent of anthrax - cutaneous, pulmonary and gastrointestinal. A recent outbreak of anthrax in a tropical region uncovered natural and in vitro resistance against penicillin, ciprofloxacin, quinolone due to over exposure of the pathogen to these antibiotics. This fact combined with the ongoing threat of using B. anthracis as a biological weapon proves that the identification of new therapeutic targets is urgently needed. METHODS: In this computational approach various databases and online based servers were used to detect essential proteins of B. anthracis A0248. Protein sequences of B. anthracis A0248 strain were retrieved from the NCBI database which was then run in CD-hit suite for clustering. NCBI BlastP against the human proteome and similarity search against DEG were done to find out essential human non-homologous proteins. Proteins involved in unique pathways were analyzed using KEGG genome database and PSORTb, CELLO v.2.5, ngLOC - these three tools were used to deduce putative cell surface proteins. RESULTS: Successive analysis revealed 116 proteins to be essential human non-homologs among which 17 were involved in unique metabolic pathways and 28 were predicted as membrane associated proteins. Both types of proteins can be exploited as they are unlikely to have homologous counterparts in the human host. CONCLUSION: Being human non-homologous, these proteins can be targeted for potential therapeutic drug development in future. Targets on unique metabolic and membrane-bound proteins can block cell wall synthesis, bacterial replication and signal transduction respectively.