title: Occurrence, Functions and Biological Significance of Arginine-Rich Proteins.
abstract: Arginine, the most basic among the 20 amino acids, occurs less frequently than lysine in proteins despite being coded by six codons. Only a few important proteins of biological significance have been found to be abundant in arginine. It has been established that these arginine-rich proteins have been assigned important roles in the biological systems. Arginine-rich cationic proteins are known to stabilize macromolecular structures by establishing appropriate interactions (salt bridges, hydrogen bonds and cation-π interactions). These proteins are also known to be the key members of many regulatory pathways such as gene expression, chromatin stability, expurgation of introns from naïve mRNA, mRNA splicing, membrane-penetrating activity and pathogenesis-related defense, to name a few. Further, arginine occurs in various combinations with other amino acids (serine, lysine, proline, tryptophan, valine, glycine and glutamic acid) which diversify the potential functions of arginine-rich proteins. Arginine-rich proteins known till date from dietary sources have been described in terms of their structure and functional properties. A variety of activities such as bactericidal, membrane-penetrating, antimicrobial, anti-hypertensive, pro-angiogenic and others have been reported for arginine-rich proteins. This review attempts to collate the occurrence, functions and the biological significance of this unique class of proteins rich in arginine.
authors.forename: Thimmegowda
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chandana
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition, CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore-570020, Karnataka State, India. venkatyp@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Yeldur P
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Venkatesh
mesh_terms: D000596:Amino Acids / Q000737:chemistry; D001120:Arginine / Q000737:chemistry*; D004044:Dietary Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000596:Amino Acids; D004044:Dietary Proteins; D011506:Proteins; D001120:Arginine