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ANALYSIS OF SEQUENCE CHARACTERISTICS OF TYPE I CD PROTEINS USING MULTIVARIATE STATISTICS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE THEIR FUNCTIONAL CLASS

Abstract

Membrane proteins are important macromolecules that play pivotal roles as transporters, receptors, enzymes, and anchoring molecules in living organisms. Cluster of Differentiation (CD) proteins are membrane proteins found in the cell membranes of leucocytes. They are cell markers for many immune cells and function as diagnostic and therapeutic targets. The knowledge of structure is essential in determining the function of a protein. However, it is extremely difficult to determine protein structure by X-ray crystallography or NMR. We used multivariate statistics to analyze the sequence characteristics of type I CD proteins in order to classify them into two different classes: enzymes or binding proteins. We selected 126 different protein parameters and used bioinformatics tools to extract them for each of the 263 type I CD proteins. We analyzed our data using principal component analysis (PCA) and K-means clustering. One initial analysis showed a clear cluster of type I CD proteins with enzymatic activity in the score plot. Statistical significance of the clustering will be assessed in the future. This is the first time this method of determining type I CD protein functional classes completely based on sequence characteristics has been employed and appears quite promising. In the future, this bioinformatics approach could be useful in determining the functional class of newly discovered type I membrane proteins.

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