Predicting conotoxin superfamily and family by using pseudo amino acid composition and modified Mahalanobis discriminant

Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2007 Mar 9;354(2):548-51. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2007.01.011. Epub 2007 Jan 11.

Abstract

The conotoxin proteins are disulfide rich small peptides that target ion channels and G protein coupled receptors. And they provide promising application in treating some chronic pain, epilepsy, cardiovascular diseases, and so on. Conotoxins may be classified into 11 superfamilies: A, D, I1, I2, J, L, M, O, P, S, and T according to the disulfide connectivity, highly conserved N-terminal precursor sequence and similar mode of actions. Successful prediction mature conotoxin superfamily peptide has important signification for the biological and pharmacological functions of the toxins. In this study, a new algorithm of increment of diversity combined with modified Mahalanobis discriminant is presented to predict five superfamilies by using the pseudo amino acid composition. The results of jackknife cross-validation test show that the overall prediction sensitivity and specificity are 88% and 91%, respectively. The predictive algorithm is also used to predict three O-conotoxin families. The 72% sensitivity and 78% specificity are obtained. These results indicate that the conotoxin superfamily peptides correlate with their amino acid compositions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Amino Acids / analysis*
  • Amino Acids / genetics
  • Animals
  • Conotoxins / analysis
  • Conotoxins / classification*
  • Conotoxins / genetics*
  • Discriminant Analysis
  • Multigene Family*
  • Predictive Value of Tests
  • Snails / chemistry
  • Snails / genetics

Substances

  • Amino Acids
  • Conotoxins