Characterization and functional analysis of the hypothetical protein in Yersinia pestis

Abstract

A hypothetical protein is a protein which exists but the function is not known. These are the proteins for which there is no experimental evidence that it is expressed in vivo. The usual scenario involving a hypothetical protein is gene identification during genome analysis. The function of a hypothetical protein can also be predicted by domain homology searches with various confidence levels. The Human Genome project and the genome projects of many other organisms has been a source for the information on the sequences and their functional aspects. However, this resulted in identification of many proteins which are hypothetical. Our project is mainly focused on these proteins. One of the hypothetical proteins with accession number AAM86904 is analyzed. This protein is from the organism Yersinia pestis KIM. This is a bacteria and kim is the strain to which the bacteria belongs. This study revealed a good amount of information about this protein. The protein characteristics, properties and similarities with other proteins are identified. The main principle for this study is that similar sequences having structural similarity are functionally related.