title: Candidate nsSNPs that can affect the functions and interactions of cell cycle proteins.
abstract: Nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) alter the encoded amino acid sequence, and are thus likely to affect the function of the proteins, and represent potential disease-modifiers. There is an enormous number of nsSNPs in the human population, and the major challenge lies in distinguishing the functionally significant and potentially disease-related ones from the rest. In this study, we analyzed the genetic variations that can alter the functions and the interactions of a group of cell cycle proteins (n = 60) and the proteins interacting with them (n = 26) using computational tools. As a result, we extracted 249 nsSNPs from 77 cell cycle proteins and their interaction partners from public SNP databases. Only 31 (12.4%) of the nsSNPs were validated. The majority (64.5%) of the validated SNPs were rare (minor allele frequencies < 5%). Evolutionary conservation analysis using the SIFT tool suggested that 16.1% of the validated nsSNPs may disrupt the protein function. In addition, 58% of the validated nsSNPs were located in functional protein domains/motifs, which together with the evolutionary conservation analysis enabled us to infer possible biological consequences of the nsSNPs in our set. Our study strongly suggests the presence of naturally occurring genetic variations in the cell cycle proteins that may affect their interactions and functions with possible roles in complex human diseases, such as cancer.
authors.affiliation: Fred A. Litwin Centre for Cancer Genetics, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Sevtap
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Savas
authors.forename: M Farhan
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Ahmad
authors.forename: Mehjabeen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shariff
authors.forename: David Y
authors.initials: DY
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Hilmi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ozcelik
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D020816:Amino Acid Motifs; D000818:Animals; D002453:Cell Cycle; D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D030562:Databases, Protein; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005787:Gene Frequency; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011487:Protein Conformation; D025941:Protein Interaction Mapping; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D040901:Proteomics / Q000379:methods*; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins; D011506:Proteins