What is it about?
Virus as Zika produces a long protein that must be cut to generate the conventional and functional viral products. The study centers on the protein with code NS2b that is necessary for the function of the molecular scissors of the virus (NS3 protein). For this study, we used the sequence, a prediction of the three-dimensional structure, the data of the published structure, and sophisticated algorithms to characterize the role of the protein amino acids on the function of the whole complex (NS2b-NS3).
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Why is it important?
Zika virus was not studied thoroughly although known for many years. The interest sparked when there was news coming from Brazil of a possible association between infection with this virus and grave consequences in the development of the unborn children (evidence of implication with microcephaly). Now, there is a great interest in understanding the basic biology of the virus with the end of understanding how it works, and how it can be controlled. This study reports a detailed characterization of one of the essential proteins in Zika's viral cycle, the protease NS3 that requires a peptide named NS2b as a helper (cofactor).
Perspectives
From another point of view, the article contains an opportunity for discussion between the similarity and differences found between the modeled three-dimensional structure and the experimental (crystallographic structure) for this protein NS2b. It is important to consider that the protein has membrane domains that historically have been difficult to study experimentally. Furthermore, in proteomics, there is a massive imbalance between the number of structures and the number of sequences available in public databases. So techniques that allow evaluating the structure computationally, filling this gap in knowledge, are a hot topic in proteomics. Additionally, here we reported the more conserved regions, and the most sensitive areas to loss of function by mutation, both indicators of which residues (amino acids) are essential for the purpose of the protease complex (NS2b - NS3).
Miguel Mendez
Universidad San Francisco de Quito
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Structure and sequence based functional annotation of Zika virus NS2b protein: Computational insights, Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, October 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2017.02.035.
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