Random amino acid mutations and protein misfolding lead to Shannon limit in sequence-structure communication.

ABSTRACT: The transmission of genomic information from coding sequence to protein structure during protein synthesis is subject to stochastic errors. To analyze transmission limits in the presence of spurious errors, Shannon's noisy channel theorem is applied to a communication channel between amino acid sequences and their structures established from a large-scale statistical analysis of protein atomic coordinates. While Shannon's theorem confirms that in close to native conformations information is transmitted with limited error probability, additional random errors in sequence (amino acid substitutions) and in structure (structural defects) trigger a decrease in communication capacity toward a Shannon limit at 0.010 bits per amino acid symbol at which communication breaks down. In several control

SUBMITTER: Lisewski AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2518838 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature