School of Basic Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, 175005, India.
Department of Molecular Medicine and Byrd Alzheimer's Research Institute, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States of America.
Sci Rep. 2018 Apr 11;8(1):5822. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-23969-0.
Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-borne alphavirus. The outbreak of CHIKV infection has been seen in many tropical and subtropical regions of the biosphere. Current reports evidenced that after outbreaks in 2005-06, the fitness of this virus propagating in Aedes albopictus enhanced due to the epistatic mutational changes in its envelope protein. In our study, we evaluated the prevalence of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and IDP regions (IDPRs) in CHIKV proteome. IDPs/IDPRs are known as members of a 'Dark Proteome' that defined as a set of polypeptide segments or whole protein without unique three-dimensional structure within the cellular milieu but with significant biological functions, such as cell cycle regulation, control of signaling pathways, and maintenance of viral proteomes. However, the intrinsically disordered aspects of CHIKV proteome and roles of IDPs/IDPRs in the pathogenic mechanism of this important virus have not been evaluated as of yet. There are no existing reports on the analysis of intrinsic disorder status of CHIKV. To fulfil this goal, we have analyzed the abundance and functionality of IDPs/IDPRs in CHIKV proteins, involved in the replication and maturation. It is likely that these IDPs/IDPRs can serve as novel targets for disorder based drug design.
基孔肯雅热病毒（CHIKV）是一种蚊媒甲病毒。该病毒的感染爆发已经在生物圈的许多热带和亚热带地区出现。目前的报告表明，在 2005-06 年爆发后，由于其包膜蛋白中的上位突变，该病毒在白纹伊蚊中的繁殖适应性增强。在我们的研究中，我们评估了 CHIKV 蛋白组中内源性无序蛋白（IDPs）和 IDP 区域（IDPRs）的流行程度。IDPs/IDPRs 被称为“暗蛋白组”的成员，其定义为一组在细胞环境中没有独特三维结构但具有重要生物学功能的多肽片段或整个蛋白质，例如细胞周期调控、信号通路控制和病毒蛋白组的维持。然而，CHIKV 蛋白组的内源性无序特征以及 IDPs/IDPRs 在这种重要病毒的致病机制中的作用尚未得到评估。目前还没有关于 CHIKV 内在无序状态分析的报告。为了实现这一目标，我们分析了参与复制和成熟的 CHIKV 蛋白中 IDPs/IDPRs 的丰度和功能。这些 IDPs/IDPRs 很可能成为基于无序的新型药物设计的靶标。
