Alternative splice variants in TIM barrel proteins from human genome correlate with the structural and evolutionary modularity of this versatile protein fold.

ABSTRACT: After the surprisingly low number of genes identified in the human genome, alternative splicing emerged as a major mechanism to generate protein diversity in higher eukaryotes. However, it is still not known if its prevalence along the genome evolution has contributed to the overall functional protein diversity or if it simply reflects splicing noise. The (βα)8 barrel or TIM barrel is one of the most frequent, versatile, and ancient fold encountered among enzymes. Here, we analyze the structural modifications present in TIM barrel proteins from the human genome product of alternative splicing events. We found that 87% of all splicing events involved deletions; most of these events resulted in protein fragments that corresponded to the (βα)2, (βα)4, (βα)5, (βα)6, and (βα)7 subdomains of TIM

SUBMITTER: Ochoa-Leyva A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3741200 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature