Title

Authors

Affiliation

Department of Biotechnology, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, A-10, Sector-62, NOIDA, 201307, Uttar Pradesh, India

Email

vibha.rani@jiit.ac.in; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received December 07, 2011; Accepted December 16, 2011; Published January 06, 2012

The extracellular matrix is fast emerging as important component mediating cell-cell interactions, along with its established role as a scaffold for cell support. Collagen, being the principal component of extracellular matrix, has been implicated in a number of pathological conditions. However, collagens are complex protein structures belonging to a large family consisting of 28 members in humans; hence, there exists a lack of in depth information about their structural features. Annotating and appreciating the functions of these proteins is possible with the help of the numerous biocomputational tools that are currently available. This study reports a comparative analysis and characterization of the alpha-1 chain of human collagen sequences. Physico-chemical, secondary structural, functional and phylogenetic classification was carried out, based on which, collagens 12, 14 and 20, which belong to the FACIT collagen family, have been identified as potential players in diseased conditions, owing to certain atypical properties such as very high aliphatic index, low percentage of glycine and proline residues and their proximity in evolutionary history. These collagen molecules might be important candidates to be investigated further for their role in skeletal disorders.

Keywords

Biocomputational tools, Collagen, Comparative characterization, Extracellular matrix

Citation

Nassa et al. Bioinformation 8(1): 026-033 (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.