Stanford University, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, 299 Campus Drive, Stanford, CA 94305-5124, USA.
Trends Parasitol. 2012 Feb;28(2):53-7. doi: 10.1016/j.pt.2011.12.004. Epub 2012 Jan 16.
A hallmark of the pathogenic lifestyle is the secretion of enzymes and other effectors that dysregulate host signaling. Intriguingly, the most potent virulence locus identified in the intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii encodes a family of related catalytically inactive protein kinases, or pseudokinases. Toxoplasma has in its kinome among the highest percentage of pseudokinases among all sequenced organisms, and the majority of these appear to be secreted into the host cell. We posit that the pseudokinase fold represents a particularly well-suited domain for functional diversification, discuss the relevance of gene expansion at these loci, and outline potential mechanisms by which a pseudokinase might affect host signaling.
致病生活方式的一个标志是分泌酶和其他效应物，这些物质会使宿主信号失调。有趣的是，在细胞内寄生虫刚地弓形虫中鉴定出的最有效的毒力基因座编码了一类相关的催化失活蛋白激酶，或假激酶。刚地弓形虫的激酶组中假激酶的比例在所有测序生物中是最高的，而且这些假激酶大多数似乎都分泌到宿主细胞中。我们假设假激酶折叠代表了功能多样化的特别合适的结构域，讨论了这些基因座基因扩张的相关性，并概述了假激酶可能影响宿主信号的潜在机制。
