title: Widespread and ample peptide overlapping between HCV and Homo sapiens proteomes.
abstract: Alignment of protein sequences is fundamental in analyzing homology, evolutionary events and functional relationships. Searching for the epitopic peptide platform underlying hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and autoimmune phenomena, we have used sequence-sequence peptide matching to compare the HCV polyprotein sequence to the human proteome. The following results were obtained: (1) pentamers from HCV polyprotein have a widespread and high level of similarity to a large number of human proteins (19,605 human proteins, that is 57.6% of the human proteome); (2) remarkable similarity between the two proteomes persists even using longer peptide motifs as probes for identity scanning; (3) only a limited number of HCV pentameric fragments have no similarity to the human host, so representing molecular sequence signatures of the virus. We conclude that the widespread sharing of numerous perfect exact matches between HCV and human proteomes might explain HCV persistence in humans.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kusalik
authors.forename: Miķelis
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bickis
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lewis
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Guglielmo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lucchese
authors.forename: Francesco M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Marincola
authors.forename: Darja
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kanduc
mesh_terms: D020816:Amino Acid Motifs; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D016174:Hepacivirus / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry*; D020543:Proteome / Q000032:analysis*; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides; D020543:Proteome