Calmodulation meta-analysis: Predicting calmodulin binding via canonical motif clustering
Mruk, Karen ; Farley, Brian M. ; Ritacco, Alan W. ; Kobertz, William R.
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Abstract
The calcium-binding protein calmodulin (CaM) directly binds to membrane transport proteins to modulate their function in response to changes in intracellular calcium concentrations. Because CaM recognizes and binds to a wide variety of target sequences, identifying CaM-binding sites is difficult, requiring intensive sequence gazing and extensive biochemical analysis. Here, we describe a straightforward computational script that rapidly identifies canonical CaM-binding motifs within an amino acid sequence. Analysis of the target sequences from high resolution CaM-peptide structures using this script revealed that CaM often binds to sequences that have multiple overlapping canonical CaM-binding motifs. The addition of a positive charge discriminator to this meta-analysis resulted in a tool that identifies potential CaM-binding domains within a given sequence. To allow users to search for CaM-binding motifs within a protein of interest, perform the meta-analysis, and then compare the results to target peptide-CaM structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank, we created a website and online database. The availability of these tools and analyses will facilitate the design of CaM-related studies of ion channels and membrane transport proteins.
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Mruk K, Farley BM, Ritacco AW, Kobertz WR. Calmodulation meta-analysis: Predicting calmodulin binding via canonical motif clustering. J Gen Physiol. 2014 Jun 16. doi:10.1085/jgp.201311140. Link to article on publisher's website
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Co-authors Karen Mruk and Brian Farley are both doctoral students in the Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Program in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) at UMass Medical School.