Bogdanov Yuri F, Dadashev Sergei Y, Grishaeva Tatiana M
N I Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
In Silico Biol. 2003;3(1-2):173-85. Epub 2003 Mar 1.
Evolutionarily distant organisms have not only orthologs, but also nonhomologous proteins that build functionally similar subcellular structures. For instance, this is true with protein components of the synaptonemal complex (SC), a universal ultrastructure that ensures the successful pairing and recombination of homologous chromosomes during meiosis. We aimed at developing a method to search databases for genes that code for such nonhomologous but functionally analogous proteins. Advantage was taken of the ultrastructural parameters of SC and the conformation of SC proteins responsible for these. Proteins involved in SC central space are known to be similar in secondary structure. Using published data, we found a highly significant correlation between the width of the SC central space and the length of rod-shaped central domain of mammalian and yeast intermediate proteins forming transversal filaments in the SC central space. Basing on this, we suggested a method for searching genome databases of distant organisms for genes whose virtual proteins meet the above correlation requirement. Our recent finding of the Drosophila melanogaster CG17604 gene coding for synaptonemal complex transversal filament protein received experimental support from another lab. With the same strategy, we showed that the Arabidopsis thaliana and Caenorhabditis elegans genomes contain unique genes coding for such proteins.
进化关系较远的生物体不仅有直系同源基因，还有构建功能相似亚细胞结构的非同源蛋白质。例如，联会复合体（SC）的蛋白质成分就是如此，SC是一种普遍存在的超微结构，可确保减数分裂期间同源染色体成功配对和重组。我们旨在开发一种方法，在数据库中搜索编码此类非同源但功能类似蛋白质的基因。利用了SC的超微结构参数以及负责这些参数的SC蛋白质的构象。已知参与SC中央空间的蛋白质在二级结构上相似。利用已发表的数据，我们发现SC中央空间的宽度与在SC中央空间形成横向细丝的哺乳动物和酵母中间蛋白质的杆状中央结构域的长度之间存在高度显著的相关性。基于此，我们提出了一种在远缘生物体的基因组数据库中搜索其虚拟蛋白质符合上述相关性要求的基因的方法。我们最近发现果蝇CG17604基因编码联会复合体横向细丝蛋白，这一发现得到了另一个实验室的实验支持。采用相同的策略，我们表明拟南芥和秀丽隐杆线虫的基因组中含有编码此类蛋白质的独特基因。
