Identification of potential ferric binding residues in the iron-binding protein of pathogenic Neisseria meningitidis through structure-based multiple sequence alignments.

The ferric iron-binding proteins of pathogenic Neisseria display structural and metal-binding properties characteristic of the transferrin family. In the absence of structural data for the ferric iron-binding proteins, spacial folding templates have been derived for the meningococcal protein from complete and partial structure-based multiple sequence alignments with structurally related proteins. The templates have been used to identify a number of potential iron-binding residues. These include four residues that are identical with the iron coordinating ligands of transferrin, but only two reside within equivalent structural elements.