Abstract
There are 3,200,000 amino acid sequences of length 5 (penta-peptides). Statistically, we expect to see a distribution of penta-peptides that is determined by the frequency of the participating amino acids. We show, however, that not only are there thousands of such penta-peptides that are absent from all known proteomes, but many of them are coded for multiple times in the non-coding genomic regions. This suggests a strong selection process that prevents these peptides from being expressed. We also show that the characteristics of these forbidden penta-peptides vary among different phylogenetic groups (e.g., eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and archaea). Our analysis provides the first steps toward understanding the "grammar" of the forbidden penta-peptides. Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2251-2259 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Protein Science |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2007 |
Keywords
- Evolutionary selection
- Phylogenetic groups
- Protein grammar
- Proteomes
- Short peptides