Abstractα-Glucosidases (αglus) (EC 3.2.1.20) have been detected in a wide range of plants, animals and microorganisms and are described by their ability to catalyze the hydrolysis of 1,4-α-glucosidic linkages, releasing α-glucose. In this study, 96 αglu protein sequences from 33 organisms species including different insects species, plants (including thale cress and rice), mammals (including human and mouse) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis as a bacterium were aligned. Sequences were analyzed by computational tools to predict the protein properties, such as molecular mass, isoelectric point, signal peptide, conserved motifs, transmembrane domain and secondary structure. Drosophila melanogaster (GenBank Accession No.: NP 610382) was chosen as one of the representatives of insects for further analyses. The tertiary structure of representative samples were acquired using the tertiary structure of oligo-1,6-glucosidase from Bacillus cereus (Protein Data Bank code: 1UOK) as a template by Phyre2 server. Protein structure analysis revealed there is a high identity among insects and other organisms. There were some similar functional domains between D. melanogaster and M. tuberculosis. The modeled αglu has a typical spatial structure in insects and exhibits a high similarity with other organisms, especially Arabidopsis thaliana. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that D. melanogaster αglu has a close relationship with other αglus from different insect families. According to these results, αglu in insects should be evolved from a common ancestor.
Membrane-Bound Class III Peroxidases: Unexpected Enzymes with Exciting Functions
