HRaP: database of occurrence of HomoRepeats and patterns in proteomes

Diversity and features of proteins with structural repeats

The review provides information on proteins with structural repeats, including their classification, characteristics, functions, and relevance in disease development. It explores methods for identifying structural repeats and specialized databases. The review also highlights the potential use of repeat proteins as drug design scaffolds and discusses their evolutionary mechanisms.

Regions with two amino acids in protein sequences: a step forward from homorepeats into the low complexity landscape

Low complexity regions (LCRs) differ in amino acid composition from the background provided by the corresponding proteomes. The simplest LCRs are homorepeats (or polyX), regions composed of mostly-one amino acid type. Extensive research has been done to characterize homorepeats, and their taxonomic, functional and structural features depend on the amino acid type and sequence context. From them, the next step towards the study of LCRs are the regions composed of two types of amino acids, which we call polyXY. We classify polyXY in three categories based on the arrangement of the two amino acid types ‘X’ and ‘Y’: direpeats (e.g. ‘XYXYXY’), joined (e.g. ‘XXXYYY’) and shuffled (e.g. ‘XYYXXY’). We developed a script to search for polyXY, and located them in a comprehensive set of 20,340 reference proteomes. These results are available in a dedicated web server called XYs, in which the user can also submit their own protein datasets to detect polyXY. We studied the distribution of polyXY types by amino acid pair XY and category, and show that polyXY in Eukaryota are mainly located within intrinsically disordered regions. Our study provides a first step towards the characterization of polyXY as protein motifs.

PolyX2: Fast Detection of Homorepeats in Large Protein Datasets

Homorepeat sequences, consecutive runs of identical amino acids, are prevalent in eukaryotic proteins. It has become necessary to annotate and evaluate this feature in entire proteomes. The definition of what constitutes a homorepeat is not fixed, and different research approaches may require different definitions; therefore, flexible approaches to analyze homorepeats in complete proteomes are needed. Here, we present polyX2, a fast, simple but tunable script to scan protein datasets for all possible homorepeats. The user can modify the length of the window to scan, the minimum number of identical residues that must be found in the window, and the types of homorepeats to be found.

DbStRiPs: Database of structural repeats in proteins

Recent interest in repeat proteins has arisen due to stable structural folds, high evolutionary conservation and repertoire of functions provided by these proteins. However, repeat proteins are poorly characterized because of high sequence variation between repeating units and structure-based identification and classification of repeats is desirable. Using a robust network-based pipeline, manual curation and Kajava's structure-based classification schema, we have developed a database of tandem structural repeats, Database of Structural Repeats in Proteins (DbStRiPs). A unique feature of this database is that available knowledge on sequence repeat families is incorporated by mapping Pfam classification scheme onto structural classification. Integration of sequence and structure-based classifications help in identifying different functional groups within the same structural subclass, leading to refinement in the annotation of repeat proteins. Analysis of complete Protein Data Bank revealed 16,472 repeat annotations in 15,141 protein chains, one previously uncharacterized novel protein repeat family (PRF), named left-handed beta helix, and 33 protein repeat clusters (PRCs). Based on their unique structural motif, ~79% of these repeat proteins are classified in one of the 14 PRFs or 33 PRCs, and the remaining are grouped as unclassified repeat proteins. Each repeat protein is provided with a detailed annotation in DbStRiPs that includes start and end boundaries of repeating units, copy number, secondary and tertiary structure view, repeat class/subclass, disease association, MSA of repeating units and cross-references to various protein pattern databases, human protein atlas and interaction resources. DbStRiPs provides easy search and download options to high-quality annotations of structural repeat proteins (URL: http://bioinf.iiit.ac.in/dbstrips/).

Between Interactions and Aggregates: The PolyQ Balance

Polyglutamine (polyQ) regions are highly abundant consecutive runs of glutamine residues. They have been generally studied in relation to the so-called polyQ-associated diseases, characterized by protein aggregation caused by the expansion of the polyQ tract via a CAG-slippage mechanism. However, more than 4,800 human proteins contain a polyQ, and only nine of these regions are known to be associated with disease. Computational sequence studies and experimental structure determinations are completing a more interesting picture in which polyQ emerge as a motif for modulation of protein-protein interactions. But long polyQ regions may lead to an excess of interactions, and produce aggregates. Within this mechanistic perspective of polyQ function and malfunction, we discuss polyQ definition and properties such as variable codon usage, sequence and context structure imposition, functional relevance, evolutionary patterns in species-centered analyses, and open resources.

Assessing the low complexity of protein sequences via the low complexity triangle

Background

Proteins with low complexity regions (LCRs) have atypical sequence and structural features. Their amino acid composition varies from the expected, determined proteome-wise, and they do not follow the rules of structural folding that prevail in globular regions. One way to characterize these regions is by assessing the repeatability of a sequence, that is, calculating the local propensity of a region to be part of a repeat.

Results

We combine two local measures of low complexity, repeatability (using the RES algorithm) and fraction of the most frequent amino acid, to evaluate different proteomes, datasets of protein regions with specific features, and individual cases of proteins with extreme compositions. We apply a representation called ‘low complexity triangle’ as a proof-of-concept to represent the low complexity measured values. Results show that proteomes have distinct signatures in the low complexity triangle, and that these signatures are associated to complexity features of the sequences. We developed a web tool called LCT (http://cbdm-01.zdv.uni-mainz.de/~munoz/lct/) to allow users to calculate the low complexity triangle of a given protein or region of interest.

Conclusions

The low complexity triangle proves to be a suitable procedure to represent the general low complexity of a sequence or protein dataset. Homorepeats, direpeats, compositionally biased regions and globular regions occupy characteristic positions in the triangle. The described pipeline can be used to characterize LCRs and may help in quantifying the content of degenerated tandem repeats in proteins and proteomes.

Amino acid homorepeats in proteins

Amino acid homorepeats, or homorepeats, are polypeptide segments found in proteins that contain stretches of identical amino acid residues. Although abnormal homorepeat expansions are linked to pathologies such as neurodegenerative diseases, homorepeats are prevalent in eukaryotic proteomes, suggesting that they are important for normal physiology. In this Review, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of the biological functions of homorepeats, which range from facilitating subcellular protein localization to mediating interactions between proteins across diverse cellular pathways. We explore how the functional diversity of homorepeat-containing proteins could be linked to the ability of homorepeats to adopt different structural conformations, an ability influenced by repeat composition, repeat length and the nature of flanking sequences. We conclude by highlighting how an understanding of homorepeats will help us better characterize and develop therapeutics against the human diseases to which they contribute.

The features of polyglutamine regions depend on their evolutionary stability

Background

Polyglutamine regions (polyQ) are one of the most studied and prevalent homorepeats in eukaryotes. They have a particular length-dependent codon usage, which relates to a characteristic CAG-slippage mechanism. Pathologically expanded tracts of polyQ are known to form aggregates and are involved in the development of several human neurodegenerative diseases. The non-pathogenic function of polyQ is to mediate protein-protein interactions via a coiled-coil pairing with an interactor. They are usually located in a helical context.

Results

Here we study the stability of polyQ regions in evolution, using a set of 60 proteomes from four distinct taxonomic groups (Insecta, Teleostei, Sauria and Mammalia). The polyQ regions can be distinctly grouped in three categories based on their evolutionary stability: stable, unstable by length variation (inserted), and unstable by mutations (mutated). PolyQ regions in these categories can be significantly distinguished by their glutamine codon usage, and we show that the CAG-slippage mechanism is predominant in inserted polyQ of Sauria and Mammalia. The polyQ amino acid context is also influenced by the polyQ stability, with a higher proportion of proline residues around inserted polyQ. By studying the secondary structure of the sequences surrounding polyQ regions, we found that regarding the structural conformation around a polyQ, its stability category is more relevant than its taxonomic information. The protein-protein interaction capacity of a polyQ is also affected by its stability, as stable polyQ have more interactors than unstable polyQ.

Conclusions

Our results show that apart from the sequence of a polyQ, information about its orthologous sequences is needed to assess its function. Codon usage, amino acid context, structural conformation and the protein-protein interaction capacity of polyQ from all studied taxa critically depend on the region stability. There are however some taxa-specific polyQ features that override this importance. We conclude that a taxa-driven evolutionary analysis is of the highest importance for the comprehensive study of any feature of polyglutamine regions.

Tandem repeats lead to sequence assembly errors and impose multi-level challenges for genome and protein databases

The widespread occurrence of repetitive stretches of DNA in genomes of organisms across the tree of life imposes fundamental challenges for sequencing, genome assembly, and automated annotation of genes and proteins. This multi-level problem can lead to errors in genome and protein databases that are often not recognized or acknowledged. As a consequence, end users working with sequences with repetitive regions are faced with 'ready-to-use' deposited data whose trustworthiness is difficult to determine, let alone to quantify. Here, we provide a review of the problems associated with tandem repeat sequences that originate from different stages during the sequencing-assembly-annotation-deposition workflow, and that may proliferate in public database repositories affecting all downstream analyses. As a case study, we provide examples of the Atlantic cod genome, whose sequencing and assembly were hindered by a particularly high prevalence of tandem repeats. We complement this case study with examples from other species, where mis-annotations and sequencing errors have propagated into protein databases. With this review, we aim to raise the awareness level within the community of database users, and alert scientists working in the underlying workflow of database creation that the data they omit or improperly assemble may well contain important biological information valuable to others.

Is there codon usage bias for poly-Q stretches in the human proteome?

We have analyzed codon usage for poly-Q stretches of different lengths for the human proteome. First, we have obtained that all long poly-Q stretches in Protein Data Bank (PDB) belong to the disordered regions. Second, we have found the bias for codon usage for glutamine homo-repeats in the human proteome. In the cases when the same codon is used for poly-Q stretches only CAG triplets are found. Similar results are obtained for human proteins with glutamine homo-repeats associated with diseases. Moreover, for proteins associated with diseases (from the HraDis database), the fraction of proteins for which the same codon is used for glutamine homo-repeats is less (22%) than for proteins from the human proteome (26%). We have demonstrated for poly-Q stretches in the human proteome that in some cases (28) the splicing sites correspond to the homo-repeats and in 11 cases, these sites appear at the C -terminal part of the homo-repeats with statistical significance 10 -8 .

Proteome-scale understanding of relationship between homo-repeat enrichments and protein aggregation properties

Expansion of homo-repeats is a molecular basis for human neurological diseases. We are the first who studied the influence of homo-repeats with lengths larger than four amino acid residues on the aggregation properties of 1449683 proteins across 122 eukaryotic and bacterial proteomes. Only 15% of proteins (215481) include homo-repeats of such length. We demonstrated that RNA-binding proteins with a prion-like domain are enriched with homo-repeats in comparison with other non-redundant protein sequences and those in the PDB. We performed a bioinformatics analysis for these proteins and found that proteins with homo-repeats are on average two times longer than those in the whole database. Moreover, we are first to discover that as a rule, homo-repeats appear in proteins not alone but in pairs: hydrophobic and aromatic homo-repeats appear with similar ones, while homo-repeats with small, polar and charged amino acids appear together with different preferences. We elaborated a new complementary approach to demonstrate the influence of homo-repeats on their host protein aggregation properties. We have shown that addition of artificial homo-repeats to natural and random proteins results in intensification of aggregation properties of the proteins. The maximal effect is observed for the insertion of artificial homo-repeats with 5–6 residues, which is consistent with the minimal length of an amyloidogenic region. We have also demonstrated that the ability of proteins with homo-repeats to aggregate cannot be explained only by the presence of long homo-repeats in them. There should be other characteristics of proteins intensifying the aggregation property including such as the appearance of homo-repeats in pairs in the same protein. We are the first who elaborated a new approach to study the influence of homo-repeats present in proteins on their aggregation properties and performed an appropriate analysis of the large number of proteomes and proteins.

The Amino Acid Composition of Quadruplex Binding Proteins Reveals a Shared Motif and Predicts New Potential Quadruplex Interactors

The importance of local DNA structures in the regulation of basic cellular processes is an emerging field of research. Amongst local non-B DNA structures, G-quadruplexes are perhaps the most well-characterized to date, and their presence has been demonstrated in many genomes, including that of humans. G-quadruplexes are selectively bound by many regulatory proteins. In this paper, we have analyzed the amino acid composition of all seventy-seven described G-quadruplex binding proteins of Homo sapiens. Our comparison with amino acid frequencies in all human proteins and specific protein subsets (e.g., all nucleic acid binding) revealed unique features of quadruplex binding proteins, with prominent enrichment for glycine (G) and arginine (R). Cluster analysis with bootstrap resampling shows similarities and differences in amino acid composition of particular quadruplex binding proteins. Interestingly, we found that all characterized G-quadruplex binding proteins share a 20 amino acid long motif/domain (RGRGR GRGGG SGGSG GRGRG) which is similar to the previously described RG-rich domain (RRGDG RRRGG GGRGQ GGRGR GGGFKG) of the FRM1 G-quadruplex binding protein. Based on this protein fingerprint, we have predicted a new set of potential G-quadruplex binding proteins sharing this interesting domain rich in glycine and arginine residues.

dAPE: a web server to detect homorepeats and follow their evolution

Summary

Homorepeats are low complexity regions consisting of repetitions of a single amino acid residue. There is no current consensus on the minimum number of residues needed to define a functional homorepeat, nor even if mismatches are allowed. Here we present dAPE, a web server that helps following the evolution of homorepeats based on orthology information, using a sensitive but tunable cutoff to help in the identification of emerging homorepeats.

Availability and Implementation

dAPE can be accessed from http://cbdm-01.zdv.uni-mainz.de/∼munoz/polyx.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Context characterization of amino acid homorepeats using evolution, position, and order

Amino acid repeats, or homorepeats, are low complexity protein motifs consisting of tandem repetitions of a single amino acid. Their presence and relative number vary in different proteomes, and some studies have tried to address this variation, proteome by proteome. In this work, we present a full characterization of amino acid homorepeats across evolution. We studied the presence and differential usage of each possible homorepeat in proteomes from various taxonomic groups, using clusters of very similar proteins to eliminate redundancy. The position of each amino acid repeat within proteins, and the order of co-occurring amino acid repeats were also addressed. As a result, we present evidence about the unevenly evolution of homorepeats, as well as the functional implications of their relative position in proteins. We discuss some of these cases in their taxonomic context. Collectively, our results show evolutionary and positional signals that suggest that homorepeats have biological function, likely creating unspecific protein interactions or modulating specific interactions in a context dependent manner. In conclusion, our work supports the functional importance of homorepeats and establishes a basis for the study of other low complexity repeats. Proteins 2017; 85:709-719. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Non-random distribution of homo-repeats: links with biological functions and human diseases

The biological function of multiple repetitions of single amino acids, or homo-repeats, is largely unknown, but their occurrence in proteins has been associated with more than 20 hereditary diseases. Analysing 122 bacterial and eukaryotic genomes, we observed that the number of proteins containing homo-repeats is significantly larger than expected from theoretical estimates. Analysis of statistical significance indicates that the minimal size of homo-repeats varies with amino acid type and proteome. In an attempt to characterize proteins harbouring long homo-repeats, we found that those containing polar or small amino acids S, P, H, E, D, K, Q and N are enriched in structural disorder as well as protein- and RNA-interactions. We observed that E, S, Q, G, L, P, D, A and H homo-repeats are strongly linked with occurrence in human diseases. Moreover, S, E, P, A, Q, D and T homo-repeats are significantly enriched in neuronal proteins associated with autism and other disorders. We release a webserver for further exploration of homo-repeats occurrence in human pathology at http://bioinfo.protres.ru/hradis/.

Quarterly intrinsic disorder digest (January-February-March, 2014)

This is the 5^th issue of the Digested Disorder series that represents a reader's digest of the scientific literature on intrinsically disordered proteins. We continue to use only 2 criteria for inclusion of a paper to this digest: The publication date (a paper should be published within the covered time frame) and the topic (a paper should be dedicated to any aspect of protein intrinsic disorder). The current digest issue covers papers published during the first quarter of 2014; i.e., during the period of January, February, and March of 2014. Similar to previous issues, the papers are grouped hierarchically by topics they cover, and for each of the included papers a short description is given on its major findings.

How Common Is Disorder? Occurrence of Disordered Residues in Four Domains of Life

Disordered regions play important roles in protein adaptation to challenging environmental conditions. Flexible and disordered residues have the highest propensities to alter the protein packing. Therefore, identification of disordered/flexible regions is important for structural and functional analysis of proteins. We used the IsUnstruct program to predict the ordered or disordered status of residues in 122 proteomes, including 97 eukaryotic and 25 large bacterial proteomes larger than 2,500,000 residues. We found that bacterial and eukaryotic proteomes contain comparable fraction of disordered residues, which was 0.31 in the bacterial and 0.38 in the eukaryotic proteomes. Additional analysis of the total of 1540 bacterial proteomes of various sizes yielded a smaller fraction of disordered residues, which was only 0.26. Together, the results showed that the larger is the size of the proteome, the larger is the fraction of the disordered residues. A continuous dependence of the fraction of disordered residues on the size of the proteome is observed for four domains of life: Eukaryota, Bacteria, Archaea, and Viruses. Furthermore, our analysis of 122 proteomes showed that the fraction of disordered residues increased with increasing the length of homo-repeats for polar, charged, and small residues, and decreased for hydrophobic residues. The maximal fraction of disordered residues was obtained for proteins containing lysine and arginine homo-repeats. The minimal fraction was found in valine and leucine homo-repeats. For 15-residue long homo-repeats these values were 0.2 (for Val and Leu) and 0.7 (for Lys and Arg).

LCR-eXXXplorer: a web platform to search, visualize and share data for low complexity regions in protein sequences

Motivation: Local compositionally biased and low complexity regions (LCRs) in amino acid sequences have initially attracted the interest of researchers due to their implication in generating artifacts in sequence database searches. There is accumulating evidence of the biological significance of LCRs both in physiological and in pathological situations. Nonetheless, LCR-related algorithms and tools have not gained wide appreciation across the research community, partly due to the fact that only a handful of user-friendly software is currently freely available.

Results: We developed LCR-eXXXplorer, an extensible online platform attempting to fill this gap. LCR-eXXXplorer offers tools for displaying LCRs from the UniProt/SwissProt knowledgebase, in combination with other relevant protein features, predicted or experimentally verified. Moreover, users may perform powerful queries against a custom designed sequence/LCR-centric database. We anticipate that LCR-eXXXplorer will be a useful starting point in research efforts for the elucidation of the structure, function and evolution of proteins with LCRs.

Availability and implementation: LCR-eXXXplorer is freely available at the URL http://repeat.biol.ucy.ac.cy/lcr-exxxplorer.

Contact:vprobon@ucy.ac.cy

Supplementary information:Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Low complexity and disordered regions of proteins have different structural and amino acid preferences

Low complexity regions (LCRs) or non-random regions of a few amino acids are abundantly present in proteins. LCRs are traditionally considered as floppy structures with high solvent accessibility. Thus little attention was paid to them for structural studies. However LCRs have been found to contain information relevant to protein structure and various important functions. The present study is an attempt to understand the structural trend of LCRs. Here we report a study conducted to understand the structural trend, solvent accessibility and amino acid preferences of LCRs. The results show that LCRs might attain any type of secondary structure; however, the helix is frequently seen, whereas sheets occur rarely. We also found that LCRs are not always exposed on the surface. We found insignificant contribution of trans-membrane helices to the overall helix content. The LCRs having a secondary structure have different enrichment and depletion of amino acids from LCRs without a secondary structure and disordered protein sequences. However, LCRs of NMR structures showed compositional and functional similarity to the disordered regions of proteins. We also noted that in ∼3/4 LCRs, the entire amino acid did not have a single structural class, but rather an ensemble of more than one secondary structure, which indicates that they are found at places where structure transition occurs. Overall analysis suggests that the overall protein sequence has a greater influence on the structural and sequence enrichment rather than only the local amino acid composition of LCRs.

Integrative data analysis indicates an intrinsic disordered domain character of Argonaute-binding motifs

MOTIVATION

Argonaute-interacting WG/GW proteins are characterized by the presence of repeated sequence motifs containing glycine (G) and tryptophan (W). The motifs seem to be remarkably adaptive to amino acid substitutions and their sequences show non-contiguity. Our previous approach to the detection of GW domains, based on scoring their gross amino acid composition, allowed annotation of several novel proteins involved in gene silencing. The accumulation of new experimental data and more advanced applications revealed some deficiency of the algorithm in prediction selectivity. Additionally, W-motifs, though critical in gene regulation, have not yet been annotated in any available online resources.

RESULTS

We present an improved set of computational tools allowing efficient management and annotation of W-based motifs involved in gene silencing. The new prediction algorithms provide novel functionalities by annotation of the W-containing domains at the local sequence motif level rather than by overall compositional properties. This approach represents a significant improvement over the previous method in terms of prediction sensitivity and selectivity. Application of the algorithm allowed annotation of a comprehensive list of putative Argonaute-interacting proteins across eukaryotes. An in-depth characterization of the domains' properties indicates its intrinsic disordered character. In addition, we created a knowledge-based portal (whub) that provides access to tools and information on RNAi-related tryptophan-containing motifs.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION

The web portal and tools are freely available at http://www.comgen.pl/whub.

CONTACT

wmk@amu.edu.pl

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The 2014 Nucleic Acids Research Database Issue and an updated NAR online Molecular Biology Database Collection

The 2014 Nucleic Acids Research Database Issue includes descriptions of 58 new molecular biology databases and recent updates to 123 databases previously featured in NAR or other journals. For convenience, the issue is now divided into eight sections that reflect major subject categories. Among the highlights of this issue are six databases of the transcription factor binding sites in various organisms and updates on such popular databases as CAZy, Database of Genomic Variants (DGV), dbGaP, DrugBank, KEGG, miRBase, Pfam, Reactome, SEED, TCDB and UniProt. There is a strong block of structural databases, which includes, among others, the new RNA Bricks database, updates on PDBe, PDBsum, ArchDB, Gene3D, ModBase, Nucleic Acid Database and the recently revived iPfam database. An update on the NCBI’s MMDB describes VAST+, an improved tool for protein structure comparison. Two articles highlight the development of the Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database: one describes SCOPe, which automates assignment of new structures to the existing SCOP hierarchy; the other one describes the first version of SCOP2, with its more flexible approach to classifying protein structures. This issue also includes a collection of articles on bacterial taxonomy and metagenomics, which includes updates on the List of Prokaryotic Names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN), Ribosomal Database Project (RDP), the Silva/LTP project and several new metagenomics resources. The NAR online Molecular Biology Database Collection, http://www.oxfordjournals.org/nar/database/c/, has been expanded to 1552 databases. The entire Database Issue is freely available online on the Nucleic Acids Research website (http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/).