Date of Award
4-19-2024
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Peter Lyons
Abstract
Enzymes catalyze chemical reactions; however, some proteins related to enzymes lack enzyme activity. To investigate changes that occur as enzymes becomes pseudoenzymes, I studied a unique family of fungal carboxypeptidases. I identified all fungal carboxypeptidase protein sequences in the NCBI database, constructed an alignment and phylogenetic tree for sequence comparison, and used Alphafold2 for 3D modeling of representative proteins. Fourteen unique groups were identified. All fungal proteins selected are separated into 3 categories, predicted to be active, intermediate, and inactive, respectively. Proteins predicted to be pseudoenzymes contained additional loops in mutation hotspots not found in predicted active enzymes. This research integrates modern bioinformatics tools for analyzing enzyme function and contributes to understanding the evolution of enzymes.
Recommended Citation
Zhao, Andy, "Investigating a Family of Fungal Pseudopeptidases with Bioinformatics Tools" (2024). Honors Theses. 294.
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors/294
Subject Area
Carboxypeptidases; Enzymes: Bioinformatics
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.