Correlation between Protein Disorder and Post Translational Modifications in Resistance Protein of Plants

Abstract

Samsed Ahmed Urmee, Rubel Hasan and Jahangir Alam

Structural analysis and characterization of individual proteins in plants is less studied than animals and microbes. Intrinsic disordered region is highly abundant in plant proteins which play critical role in plant biology & act as an integrator of signals from multiple plant regulatory inputs. In this work, we calculated the degree of intrinsic disorder in the Resistance protein (R protein) of seven typical monocotyledonous (monocot) and dicotyledonous (dicot) plant species. R protein-based resistance of plants to various pathogens is a main area of interest in plant innate immunity. We further predicted multiple sites for phosphorylation, glycosylation, acetylation and methylation and systematically investigated the correlation between protein disorder and post-translational modifications (PTMs). It was found that phosphorylation, and acetylation displayed a clear preference for occurrence in disordered regions of plant proteins. In contrast, methylation prefers to be ordered, whereas N-glycosylation did not show a universal structural preference in monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants. In addition, this study revealed significant differences between some of the characteristics of R proteins in monocot and in dicot plant. They included disorder degree, increased rate of R-methylation, decreased rate of N-glycosylation and K-methylation in monocotyledonous plant species, as compared with dicotyledonous species. Altogether, this study sheds light on the connection between protein disorder and multiple PTMs in R proteins of plants.

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