Hello,
I have to solve a problem and I need to know the following before I can solve it.
What happens if you replace the amino acid cysteine by glycine in the protein zinc finger? What happens if you did the same mutation again but now replace histidine by glycine? Will the functions of the protein be lost?
What mutation would be more severe for the protein? Cys ->Gly or His-> Gly?
Thank you!
1 answer
There's a resource called pubmed that you could use to fairly easily answer all of your questions. People have been studying Zn fingers for a while and there are many papers describing the effects of the mutations you're interested in. The domain referred to by Neilfws is one of the most widely known, in which zinc is coordinated by both cysteine and histidine. So to answer your questions, mutation of the coordinating cysteine will disrupt function of the protein. Mutation of the coordinating histidine will disrupt function of the protein. In general, there is less tolerance for Cys ->Gly than for His-> Gly, but this may have no relevance to your question, as there are so many contexts for Zn fingers that it's hard to rationalize a general principle or specific instance from your question. Another resource you might find useful is a search engine called google. You can use it to find a wealth of information on zinc fingers and the effects of amino acid substitution on protein structure (there's a nice attribute called google scholar, which will send you to academic articles). Between that and pubmed you can find answers with a minimal amount of work.
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Sounds like homework. (1) Which cysteine? I assume you mean, one of the Cys which binds the zinc. (2) Which histidine? Again, I assume you mean one which binds the zinc. And that is not "the same mutation again". (3) Assume we're talking about the Cys2His2 - be aware that there are other families. (4) I'm sure there's plenty of literature on these types of mutation: have you read any of it?
Please improve this question and indicate the relevance to a bioinformatics problem.
It's a for a project. The problem is really complex. It's really hard to explain everything here. Even a phD and another bioinformatician could not completely help me .
I tweeted you on Twitter since there was no other way to contact you. Hopefully you can get back to me so we can chat. Thank you!
I'm not a consulting service. I only answer questions in public forums, because I believe that best benefits the community. Why don't you try to improve your question, as requested. Take as much space and be as detailed as you need.
That suggests maybe you didn't explain the problem very well to them either, or you should hang around smarter PhDs. I'll let you decide that one. Neilfws is right, take your time to explain what problem you're really trying to solve. People here love complex problems. But they'd like to see that you put some effort in first (people go out of their way to help someone who is stuck, vs. someone who hasn't lifted a finger).
Closing since no effort made to improve the question. Will reopen if you change your mind.