Intriguing repeats
19 Dec 2011
In protein sequences, amino acid tandem repeats are among the most prevalent patterns. There are several types of repeats. Repetitions of a single amino acid (single amino acid repeats, SAAR) such as polyglutamine (polyQ) and polyalanine (polyA) have been linked to neurodegenerative diseases. Other SAARs are thought to play a role in various biological processes, including network evolution (proline repeats) and protein localization (histidine repeats). Repeats with more complex patterns have also been extensively studied. For example, the role of leucine rich repeats (LRR) as the structural framework in protein-protein interactions.
So far, most of the research has been limited to studying the role of certain repeats within a single organism, but due to the lack of repositories for large-scale investigation and comparison of repeats from a variety of proteomes, drawing more general conclusions on the functional and evolutionary roles of repeats has not yet been possible. With ProRepeat, Hong Luo and colleagues from the group of Jack Leunissen (Wageningen University) aim to provide an integrated, curated and updated repository and analysis platform for the study of amino acid tandem repeats. ProRepeat is available through http://prorepeat.bioinformatics.nl
H Luo, K Lin, A David, H Nijveen, JAM Leunissen
ProRepeat: an integrated repository for studying amino acid tandem repeats in proteins
Nucleic Acids Research 2011
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