A hypothesis explaining why so many pathogen virulence proteins are moonlighting proteins
| Autor: | Angel Mozo-Villarias, Luis Franco-Serrano, Josep A. Pérez-Pons, Enrique Querol, Juan Cedano, Isaac Amela, Jaume Piñol |
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| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Microbiology (medical) Protein moonlighting Databases Factual Virulence proteins Virulence Factors 030106 microbiology Host immune response Virulence Conservation Biology Epitope 03 medical and health sciences Immune system Antigen moonlighting proteins Immunology and Allergy Moonlighting proteins Pathogen Immune Evasion Genetics epitope Vaccines General Immunology and Microbiology Host (biology) conservation General Medicine vaccines host immune response virulence proteins Metabolic pathway Metabolism 030104 developmental biology Infectious Diseases Perspective Host-Pathogen Interactions |
| Zdroj: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Pathogens and Disease |
| Popis: | Moonlighting or multitasking proteins refer to those proteins with two or more functions performed by a single polypeptide chain. Proteins that belong to key ancestral functions and metabolic pathways such as primary metabolism typically exhibit moonlighting phenomenon. We have collected 698 moonlighting proteins in MultitaskProtDB-II database. A survey shows that 25% of the proteins of the database correspond to moonlighting functions related to pathogens virulence activity. Why is the canonical function of these virulence proteins mainly from ancestral key biological functions (especially of primary metabolism)? Our hypothesis is that these proteins present a high conservation between the pathogen protein and the host counterparts. Therefore, the host immune system will not elicit protective antibodies against pathogen proteins. The fact of sharing epitopes with host proteins (known as epitope mimicry) might be the cause of autoimmune diseases. Although many pathogen proteins can be antigenic, only a few of them would elicit a protective immune response. This would also explain the lack of successful vaccines based in these conserved moonlighting proteins. This review looks at why so many pathogen virulence proteins are from the primary metabolism and are conserved between pathogen and host. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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