Prediction of Spontaneous Protein Deamidation from Sequence-Derived Secondary Structure and Intrinsic Disorder

PLoS One. 2015 Dec 16;10(12):e0145186. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145186. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Asparagine residues in proteins undergo spontaneous deamidation, a post-translational modification that may act as a molecular clock for the regulation of protein function and turnover. Asparagine deamidation is modulated by protein local sequence, secondary structure and hydrogen bonding. We present NGOME, an algorithm able to predict non-enzymatic deamidation of internal asparagine residues in proteins in the absence of structural data, using sequence-based predictions of secondary structure and intrinsic disorder. Compared to previous algorithms, NGOME does not require three-dimensional structures yet yields better predictions than available sequence-only methods. Four case studies of specific proteins show how NGOME may help the user identify deamidation-prone asparagine residues, often related to protein gain of function, protein degradation or protein misfolding in pathological processes. A fifth case study applies NGOME at a proteomic scale and unveils a correlation between asparagine deamidation and protein degradation in yeast. NGOME is freely available as a webserver at the National EMBnet node Argentina, URL: http://www.embnet.qb.fcen.uba.ar/ in the subpage "Protein and nucleic acid structure and sequence analysis".

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amides / chemistry*
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Asparagine / chemistry
  • Humans
  • Interferon-beta / chemistry
  • Interferon-beta / metabolism
  • Intrinsically Disordered Proteins / chemistry*
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Protein Processing, Post-Translational
  • Protein Structure, Secondary
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / chemistry
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / metabolism
  • Sequence Analysis, Protein / methods*
  • Software*
  • Superoxide Dismutase / chemistry
  • Superoxide Dismutase / metabolism
  • bcl-X Protein / chemistry
  • bcl-X Protein / metabolism

Substances

  • Amides
  • Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins
  • bcl-X Protein
  • Asparagine
  • Interferon-beta
  • Superoxide Dismutase

Grants and funding

Funding was provided by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Argentina, www.agencia.mincyt.gob.ar), grant number PICT 2012-2550 to IES. Funding was also provided by CONICET graduate fellowship to RL; IES and LGA are career investigators from CONICET. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.