Title

Authors

Affiliation

¹Division of Biological Sciences, Department of Pharmacy, Gupta College of Technological Sciences, Ashram More, G.T. Road, Asansol-713301, West Bengal, India; ²Department of Zoology, The University of Burdwan, Golapbag, Burdwan -713104, West Bengal, India.

Email

goutamchandra63@yahoo.co.in; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received September 11, 2012; Accepted September 12, 2012; Published September 21, 2012

Snake venom contains a diverse array of proteins and polypeptides. Cytotoxins and short neurotoxins are non-enzymatic polypeptide components of snake venom. The three-dimensional structure of cytotoxin and short neurotoxin resembles a three finger appearance of three-finger protein super family. Different family members of three-finger protein super family are employed in diverse biological functions. In this work we analyzed the cytotoxin, short neurotoxin and related non-toxin proteins of other chordates in terms of functional analysis, amino acid compositional (%) profile, number of amino acids, molecular weight, theoretical isoelectric point (pI), number of positively charged and negatively charged amino acid residues, instability index and grand average of hydropathy with the help of different bioinformatical tools. Among all interesting results, profile of amino acid composition (%) depicts that all sequences contain a conserved cysteine amount but differential amount of different amino acid residues which have a family specific pattern. Involvement in different biological functions is one of the driving forces which contribute the vivid amino acid composition profile of these proteins. Different biological system dependent adaptation gives the birth of enriched bio-molecules. Understanding of physicochemical properties of these proteins will help to generate medicinally important therapeutic molecules for betterment of human lives.

Keywords

Snake venom, Cytotoxin, Short neurotoxin, Three-finger proteins, Bioinformatics, Physicochemical characterization

Citation

Panda & Chandra, Bioinformation 8(18): 891-896 (2012)
 

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.