Characterization of the human head louse nit sheath reveals proteins with adhesive property that show no resemblance to known proteins.

ABSTRACT: Human head and body lice attach their eggs respectively to human hair or clothing by female lice secreted glue that hardens into a nit sheath that protects the egg. In this study, a series of experiments were conducted to characterize the glue-like material of the nit sheath. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy on embryo-cleared nit showed proteinaceous amide I bands. With this result, we determined the amino acid composition of the nit sheath proteins and performed similarity search against the protein products of the body louse genome to identify the candidate nit sheath proteins. The identified two homologous proteins newly named as louse nit sheath protein (LNSP) 1 and LNSP2 are composed of three domains of characteristic repeating sequences. The N-terminal and middle domains consi

SUBMITTER: Park JK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6328571 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature