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Background: Automatic extraction of motifs from biological sequences is an important research problem in study of molecular biology. For proteins, it is desired to discover sequence motifs containing a large number of wildcard symbols, as the residues associated with functional sites are usually largely separated in sequences. Discovering such patterns is time-consuming because abundant combinations exist when long gaps (a gap consists of one or more successive wildcards) are considered. Mining algorithms often employ constraints to narrow down the search space in order to increase efficiency. However, improper constraint models might degrade the sensitivity and specificity of the motifs discovered by computational methods. We previously proposed a new constraint model to handle large wildcard regions for discovering functional motifs of proteins. The patterns that satisfy the proposed constraint model are called W-patterns. A W-pattern is a structured motif that groups motif symbols into pattern blocks interleaved with large irregular gaps. Considering large gaps reflects the fact that functional residues are not always from a single region of protein sequences, and restricting motif symbols into clusters corresponds to the observation that short motifs are frequently present within protein families. To efficiently discover W-patterns for large-scale sequence annotation and function prediction, this paper first formally introduces the problem to solve and proposes an algorithm named WildSpan (sequential pattern mining across large wildcard regions) that incorporates several pruning strategies to largely reduce the mining cost. Results: WildSpan is shown to efficiently find W-patterns containing conserved residues that are far separated in sequences. We conducted experiments with two mining strategies, protein-based and family-based mining, to evaluate the usefulness of W-patterns and performance of WildSpan. The protein-based mining mode of WildSpan is developed for discovering functional regions of a single protein by referring to a set of related sequences (e.g. its homologues). The discovered W-patterns are used to characterize the protein sequence and the results are compared with the conserved positions identified by multiple sequence alignment (MSA). The family-based mining mode of WildSpan is developed for extracting sequence signatures for a group of related proteins (e.g. a protein family) for protein function classification. In this situation, the discovered W-patterns are compared with PROSITE patterns as well as the patterns generated by three existing methods performing the similar task. Finally, analysis on execution time of running WildSpan reveals that the proposed pruning strategy is effective in improving the scalability of the proposed algorithm. Conclusions: The mining results conducted in this study reveal that WildSpan is efficient and effective in discovering functional signatures of proteins directly from sequences. The proposed pruning strategy is effective in improving the scalability of WildSpan. It is demonstrated in this study that the W-patterns discovered by WildSpan provides useful information in characterizing protein sequences. The WildSpan executable and open source codes are available on the web (http://biominer.csie.cyu.edu.tw/wildspan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure and stability of repeat proteins has been little studied in comparison to the properties of the more familiar globular proteins. Here, the structure and stability of designed tetratricopeptide-repeat (TPR) proteins is described. The TPR is a 34-amino-acid motif which adopts a helix–turn–helix structure and occurs as tandem repeats. The design of a consensus TPR motif (CTPR) has previously been described. Here, the crystal structures and stabilities of proteins that contain eight or 20 identical tandem repeats of the CTPR motif (CTPR8 and CTPR20) are presented. Both CTPR8 and CTPR20 adopt a superhelical overall structure. The structures of the different-length CTPR proteins are compared with each other and with the structures of natural TPR domains. Also, the unusual and perhaps unique crystal-packing interactions resulting in pseudo-infinite crystalline superhelices observed in the different crystal forms of CTPR8 and CTPR20 are discussed. Finally, it is shown that the thermodynamic behavior of CTPR8 and CTPR20 can be predicted from the behavior of other TPRs in this series using an Ising model-based analysis. The designed protein series CTPR2–CTPR20 covers the natural size repertoire of TPR domains and as such is an excellent model system for natural TPR proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Bence Jones protein isolated in the early 1960s from a patient (initials KWR) suffering from plasma-cell dyscrasia was crystallized and its structure was analyzed in four different unit cells by X-ray diffraction. The final models of the molecule in all crystal forms were virtually the same, although the elbow angles relating the constant and variable domains of the Bence Jones dimers varied over a range of 10°. The tetragonal form had an R factor of 22.6% and an Rfree of 28.3% at 2.2 Å resolution. Phosphate or sulfate ions (depending on the crystallization conditions) were found in the antigen-combining sites in all crystals, as well as an unidentified ligand tightly bound in the hydrophobic `deep pocket' beneath the antigen-binding site. The ligand was treated as a phenol molecule. Two trigonal crystal forms were among those solved. One was grown at pH 4.0 and the other was only obtained after sitting for more than eight months at room temperature. The latter crystal was composed of molecules that were degraded in their constant domains. Both low pH and proteolytic degradation of constant domains are known to promote the polymerization of some Bence Jones proteins into amyloid fibrils. Indeed, in both trigonal crystal forms the molecules are organized with pseudo-hexagonal symmetry about the unique crystallographic axes in a manner suggestive of such fibrils. The arrangement of Bence Jones dimers is also consistent with other observations regarding Bence Jones amyloid-fibril structure and current models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]