Friday, January 27, 2017

New Techniques for Ancient Proteins: Direct Coupling Analysis Applied on Proteins involved in Iron Sulfur Cluster Biogenesis

Marco Fantini, Duccio Malinverni, Paolo De Los Rios, Annalisa Pastore, bioRxiv 103283; doi:10.1101/103283

We have used DCA to analyse three proteins of the iron-sulfur biogenesis machine, an essential metabolic pathway conserved in all organisms. We show that, although based on a relatively small number of sequences due to its distribution in genomes, we can correctly recapitulate all the features of the fold of the CyaY/frataxin family, a protein involved in the human disease Friedreich's ataxia.