title: Drosophila cuticular proteins with the R&R Consensus: annotation and classification with a new tool for discriminating RR-1 and RR-2 sequences.
abstract: The majority of cuticular protein sequences identified to date from a diversity of arthropods have a conserved region known as the Rebers and Riddiford Consensus (R&R Consensus). This consensus region has been used to query the whole genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster. One hundred one putative cuticular proteins have been annotated. Of these, 29 had been annotated previously, and for several their authenticity as cuticular proteins had been verified by protein sequence data from isolated cuticles or by localization of their transcripts in epidermis when cuticle synthesis was occurring. The original names have been retained, and the 72 newly annotated proteins have been given names beginning with Cpr followed by the chromosomal band in which the gene is located. Proteins with the R&R Consensus can be split into three groups RR-1, RR-2 and RR-3, with some correlation to the type or region of the cuticle in which they occur. Previous classification was manual and subjective. We now have developed a tool using profile hidden Markov models that allows more objective classification. We describe the development and verification of the validity of this tool that is available at the cuticleDB website http://bioinformatics2.biol.uoa.gr/cuticleDB/index.jsp.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cell Biology and Biophysics, Faculty of Biology, University of Athens, Athens 157 01, Greece.
authors.forename: Maria V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Karouzou
authors.forename: Yannis
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Spyropoulos
authors.forename: Vassiliki A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Iconomidou
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Cornman
authors.forename: Stavros J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Hamodrakas
authors.forename: Judith H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Willis
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D016384:Consensus Sequence; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D008390:Markov Chains; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D029721:Drosophila Proteins