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Insertions and Deletions Play an Important Role in the Diversity of Conotoxins

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Abstract

Previous studies have indicated that each conotoxin precursor has a hyperconserved signal region, a rather conserved pro region and a hypervariable mature region, and nucleotide mutations are the main driven factor. However, in this study, we made an in-depth analysis on the M-superfamily conotoxin precursors and found that the diversity of the signal, pro and mature regions are more complicated than previous findings. Different conotoxin precursors can have same signal, pro and/or mature regions, especially different conotoxin precursors with same mature region but different signal and pro regions. In addition, insertions and deletions (indels) were detected in conotoxin precursors. Indels are infrequent in the signal region but frequent in the pro and mature regions. In contrast to deletions that dominate in the pro region, insertions dominate in the mature region. The number of amino acids is crucial for the physiological functions of mature conotoxins, therefore indels, especially insertions in the mature region, play an important role in the sequence and function diversity of conotoxins.

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Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81703412 and 81402001) and Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant Nos. 2016JJ3177 and 2018JJ3830).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, NHC Key Laboratory of Nanobiological Technology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, 87 Xiangya Road, Changsha, 410008, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Manyi Yang

  2. Department of Oncology, Laboratory of Structural Biology, NHC Key Laboratory of Cancer Proteomics, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, 410008, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Maojun Zhou

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  1. Manyi Yang
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  2. Maojun Zhou
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Correspondence to Maojun Zhou.

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Yang, M., Zhou, M. Insertions and Deletions Play an Important Role in the Diversity of Conotoxins. Protein J 39, 190–195 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10930-020-09892-2

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