A multivariate study of the relationship between the genetic code and the physical-chemical properties of amino acids

Summary The 20 naturally occurring amino acids are characterized by 20 variables: pK_{NH 2}, pK_COOH, pI, molecular weight, substituent van der Waals volume, seven¹H and¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance shift variables, and eight hydrophobicity-hydrophilicity scales. The 20-dimensional data set is reduced to a few new dimensions by principal components analysis. The three first principal components reveal relationships between the properties of the amino acids and the genetic code. Thus the amino acids coded for by adenosine (A), uracil (U), or cytosine (C) in their second codon position (corresponding to U, A, or G in the second anticodon position) are grouped in these components. No grouping was detected for the amino acids coded for by guanine (G) in the second codon position (corresponding to C in the second anticodon position). The results show that a relationship exists between the physical-chemical properties of the amino acids and which of the A (U), U (A), or C (G) nucleotide is used in the second codon (anticodon) position. The amino acids coded for by G (C) in the second codon (anticodon) position do not participate in this relationship.     

系统比较氨基酸描述子在多肽定量构效关系中的应用

氨基酸描述子是采用多元统计方法从大量氨基酸性质参数中提取得到的少数关键信息成分,目前已被广泛应用于多肽生物活性预测及蛋白质功能判别等领域。鉴于近年来氨基酸描述子种类的极速扩增,收集了目前国内外发表的27种氨基酸描述子,并将其用于8组经典多肽集的结构表征及定量构效关系研究。通过系统比较这些描述子对同一肽集与不同肽集的统计建模结果,我们认为物理化学描述子的建模效果优于拓扑描述子,拓扑描述子的建模效果优于三维结构描述子,且已有诸多氨基酸描述子已经达到性能限度,如未考虑肽链内部各氨基酸残基的交互影响,肽配基与相应靶标蛋白的相互结合,因此不再建议按照传统思路进一步提出新型描述子种类。     

Grouping of amino acid types and extraction of amino acid properties from multiple sequence alignments using variance maximization

Understanding of amino acid type co-occurrence in trusted multiple sequence alignments is a prerequisite for improved sequence alignment and remote homology detection algorithms. Two objective approaches were used to investigate co-occurrence, both based on variance maximization of the weighted residue frequencies in columns taken from a large alignment database. The first approach discretely grouped amino acid types, and the second approach extracted orthogonal properties of amino acids using principal components analysis. The grouping results corresponded to amino acid physical properties such as side chain hydrophobicity, size, or backbone flexibility, and an optimal arrangement of approximately eight groups was observed. However, interpretation of the orthogonal properties was more complex. Although the principal components accounting for the largest variances exhibited modest correlations with hydrophobicity and conservation of glycine, in general principal components did not correspond to physical properties of amino acids. Although not intuitive, these amino acid mathematical properties were demonstrated to be robust and to improve local pairwise alignment accuracy, relative to 20 amino acid frequencies alone, for a simple test case.     

一种快速非比对的蛋白质序列相似性与进化分析方法

本文提出了一种新的快速非比对的蛋白质序列相似性与进化分析方法。在刻画蛋白质序列特征时,首先将氨基酸的10种理化性质通过主成分分析浓缩为6个主成分,并且将每条蛋白质序列里的氨基酸数目作为权重对主成分得分值进行加权平均,然后再融合氨基酸的位置信息构成一个26维的蛋白质序列特征向量,最后利用欧式距离度量蛋白质序列间的相似性及进化关系。通过对3个蛋白质序列数据集的测试表明,本文提出的方法能将每条蛋白质序列准确聚类,并且简便快捷,说明了该方法的有效性。     

Purification in high yield of brain fibroblast growth factor by preparative isoelectric focusing at pH 9.6

The purification of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) from bovine brain has been reported (Gospodarowicz, D., Bialecki, H., and Greenburg G. (1978) J. Biol. Chem. 253, 3736-3743). Further studies have shown that bovine brain fibroblast growth factor is composed of three fragments derived by limited proteolysis from myelin basic protein (Westall, F. C., Lennon, V. A., and Gospodarowicz, D. (1978) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 75, 4675-4678). Two of these fragments (FGF-1 and -2) had a high specific mitogenic activity. In the presence study, we have used isoelectric focusing to purify brain FGF to homogeneity. The principal active components of brain FGF preparations partially purified by gel filtration on Sephadex G-75 can be recovered in high yield from isoelectric focusing in sucrose. These components have a pI of 9.6 and 9.54, respectively. Their electrophoretic mobility, amino acid composition, and biological properties are identical with those previously reported for FGF-1 and -2.