Computational analysis of M.tuberculosis - CarD protein

Abstract

CarD protein which regulates rRNA transcription by interacting with RNA polymerase (RNAP), seems to be essential for the survival of M.tuberculosis. TRCF, a protein involved in DNA repair process has same type of interaction with RNAP but found not essential for the organism’s survival.

In this study, computational analysis of CarD sequence retrieved from NCBI and comparative study of CarD and TRCF sequences are carried out using bioinformatics tools. ProtParam tool analysis of CarD sequence predicts the molecular weight to be 17 Kda and pI to be 5.49.The absorbance at the concentration of 0.1% in water at 280nm is 0.947.The instability index indicates that the protein will be stable in the test tube. Blastp tool search against database Human proteins supports a view that CarD can be used as a drug target as it has no similar proteins in humans. SMART tool predicted the presence of a single domain CarD_TRCF   in CarD protein. STRING database is queried to get the possible interacting proteins for both CarD and TRCF. The comparative analysis of the results speculates that CarD’s association with proteins of Isoprenoid pathway may be responsible for the indispensability of the protein to the organism.

Keywords: CarD, TRCF, ProtParam, SMART, STRING.