A census of actin-associated proteins in humans

Iyer Meenakshi S; Madan Rao; Satyajit Mayor; Ramanathan Sowdhamini

doi:10.3389/fcell.2023.1168050

A census of actin-associated proteins in humans

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2023 Apr 28:11:1168050. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2023.1168050. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Iyer Meenakshi S¹, Madan Rao¹, Satyajit Mayor¹, Ramanathan Sowdhamini^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ National Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR, Bangalore, India.
² Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
³ Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore, India.

Abstract

Actin filaments help in maintaining the cell structure and coordinating cellular movements and cargo transport within the cell. Actin participates in the interaction with several proteins and also with itself to form the helical filamentous actin (F-actin). Actin-binding proteins (ABPs) and actin-associated proteins (AAPs) coordinate the actin filament assembly and processing, regulate the flux between globular G-actin and F-actin in the cell, and help maintain the cellular structure and integrity. We have used protein-protein interaction data available through multiple sources (STRING, BioGRID, mentha, and a few others), functional annotation, and classical actin-binding domains to identify actin-binding and actin-associated proteins in the human proteome. Here, we report 2482 AAPs and present an analysis of their structural and sequential domains, functions, evolutionary conservation, cellular localization, abundance, and tissue-specific expression patterns. This analysis provides a base for the characterization of proteins involved in actin dynamics and turnover in the cell.

Keywords: actin-associated proteins; actin-binding proteins; calponin homology domain; cytoskeleton; protein–protein interactions.

Grants and funding

RS and IM acknowledge funding and support provided by the Bioinformatics Centre Grant funded by the Department of Biotechnology, India (BT/PR40187/BTIS/137/9/2021). RS would also like to thank the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology for the funding through her Mazumdar-Shaw Chair in Computational Biology (IBAB/MSCB/182/2022).