![]() ![]() “What we wanted to do is take a step back and instead of looking at the CRLs individually, try to look at them all and see if we could observe some larger scale patterns that might help us understand what the ones that have assigned duties are doing, and also help us learn a bit more about what those without assigned duties are doing,” says Jaberi-Lashkari. So the MIT team decided to use bioinformatics - an approach that uses computational methods to analyze large sets of biological data - to assess them as a larger group. These CRLs are often rich in a single amino acid such as alanine, lysine or glutamic acid.įinding these sequences and then studying their functions individually is a time-consuming process. Previous research has revealed that CRLs are involved in a variety of cellular processes, including cell adhesion and DNA binding. Eliezer Calo, assistant professor of biology at MIT, is the lead author of the paper. Lee and graduate student Nima Jaberi-Lashkari are lead authors of the study, which appears today in eLife. The researchers also found differences between LCRs from different species and showed that these species-specific LCR sequences correspond to species-specific functions, such as the formation of plant cell walls. “Instead of looking at specific CRLs and their functions, which may appear distinct because they are involved in different processes, our broader approach allows us to see similarities between their properties, suggesting that the functions of CRLs may not be so disparate after all,” says MIT graduate student Byron Lee. They found that although CRLs can vary between proteins and species, they often share a similar role: to help the protein they are in join a larger-scale assembly such as the nucleolus, an organelle found in almost all human cells. Using their technique, the researchers analyzed all the proteins present in eight different species, from bacteria to humans. Their technique allows them to analyze the similarities and differences between CRLs from different species, and helps them determine the functions of these sequences and the proteins in which they are found. The proteins that contain these sequences have many different functions, but MIT biologists have now found a way to identify and study them as a unified group. ![]() These “low complexity regions” are also found in most other organisms. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.77058Ībout 70% of all human proteins include at least one sequence consisting of a single amino acid repeated several times, with a few other amino acids sprinkled in. Using computational analysis, the researchers found that many repetitive sequences are shared between proteins and are similar across species, from bacteria to humans. ![]()
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