The importance of definitions in the study of polyQ regions: A tale of thresholds, impurities and sequence context.

ABSTRACT: Polyglutamine (polyQ) regions are one of the most prevalent homorepeats in eukaryotes. It is however difficult to evaluate their prevalence because various studies claim different results. The reason is the lack of a consensus to define what is indeed a polyQ region. We have tackled this issue by studying how the use of different thresholds (i.e., minimum number of glutamines required in a protein region of a given size), to detect polyQ regions in the human proteome influences not only their prevalence but also their general features and sequence context. Threshold definition shapes the length distribution of the polyQ dataset, and changes the observed number and position of impurities (amino acids other than glutamine) within polyQ regions. Irrespective of the chosen threshold, leucine a

SUBMITTER: Mier P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7016039 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature