Article
An Orthology-Based Analysis of Pathogenic Protozoa Impacting Global Health: An Improved Comparative Genomics Approach with Prokaryotes and Model Eukaryote Orthologs
Registro en:
CUADRAT, Rafael R.C et al. An Orthology-Based Analysis of Pathogenic Protozoa Impacting Global Health: An Improved Comparative Genomics Approach with Prokaryotes and Model Eukaryote Orthologs. OMICS A Journal of Integrative Biology, v.18, n.8, p.524-538, 2014.
1536-2310
10.1089/omi.2013.0172
Autor
Cuadrat, Rafael R. C
Cruz, Sérgio Manuel da Serra
Tschoeke, Diogo Antônio
Silva, Edno
Tosta, Frederico
Jucá, Henrique
Jardim, Rodrigo
Campos, Maria Luiza M
Mattoso, Marta
Dávila, Alberto M. R.
Resumen
A key focus in 21st century integrative biology and drug discovery for neglected tropical and other diseases has
been the use of BLAST-based computational methods for identification of orthologous groups in pathogenic
organisms to discern orthologs, with a view to evaluate similarities and differences among species, and thus
allow the transfer of annotation from known/curated proteins to new/non-annotated ones. We used here a
profile-based sensitive methodology to identify distant homologs, coupled to the NCBI’s COG (Unicellular
orthologs) and KOG (Eukaryote orthologs), permitting us to perform comparative genomics analyses on five
protozoan genomes. OrthoSearch was used in five protozoan proteomes showing that 3901 and 7473 orthologs
can be identified by comparison with COG and KOG proteomes, respectively. The core protozoa proteome
inferred was 418 Protozoa-COG orthologous groups and 704 Protozoa-KOG orthologous groups: (i) 31.58%
(132/418) belongs to the category J (translation, ribosomal structure, and biogenesis), and 9.81% (41/418) to the
category O (post-translational modification, protein turnover, chaperones) using COG; (ii) 21.45% (151/704)
belongs to the categories J, and 13.92% (98/704) to the O using KOG. The phylogenomic analysis showed four
well-supported clades for Eukarya, discriminating Multicellular [(i) human, fly, plant and worm] and Unicellular
[(ii) yeast, (iii) fungi, and (iv) protozoa] species. These encouraging results attest to the usefulness of
the profile-based methodology for comparative genomics to accelerate semi-automatic re-annotation, especially
of the protozoan proteomes. This approach may also lend itself for applications in global health, for example, in
the case of novel drug target discovery against pathogenic organisms previously considered difficult to research
with traditional drug discovery tools.