title: Computational and statistical analyses of amino acid usage and physico-chemical properties of the twelve late embryogenesis abundant protein classes.
abstract: Late Embryogenesis Abundant Proteins (LEAPs) are ubiquitous proteins expected to play major roles in desiccation tolerance. Little is known about their structure - function relationships because of the scarcity of 3-D structures for LEAPs. The previous building of LEAPdb, a database dedicated to LEAPs from plants and other organisms, led to the classification of 710 LEAPs into 12 non-overlapping classes with distinct properties. Using this resource, numerous physico-chemical properties of LEAPs and amino acid usage by LEAPs have been computed and statistically analyzed, revealing distinctive features for each class. This unprecedented analysis allowed a rigorous characterization of the 12 LEAP classes, which differed also in multiple structural and physico-chemical features. Although most LEAPs can be predicted as intrinsically disordered proteins, the analysis indicates that LEAP class 7 (PF03168) and probably LEAP class 11 (PF04927) are natively folded proteins. This study thus provides a detailed description of the structural properties of this protein family opening the path toward further LEAP structure - function analysis. Finally, since each LEAP class can be clearly characterized by a unique set of physico-chemical properties, this will allow development of software to predict proteins as LEAPs.
authors.affiliation: Université d'Angers, Institut de Recherche en Horticulture et Semences, INRA, Agrocampus-Ouest, Université d'Angers, SFR 4207 QUASAV, LUNAM Université, Angers, France. emmanuel.jaspard@univ-angers.fr
authors.forename: Emmanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Jaspard
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Macherel
authors.forename: Gilles
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hunault
mesh_terms: D000596:Amino Acids / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis / Q000379:methods; D017510:Protein Folding; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D010940:Plant Proteins; C066246:late embryogenesis abundant protein, plant