Wajahat M. Qazi

MAPRes: An Efficient Method to Analyze Protein Sequence Around Post-Translational Modification Sites

Functional switches are often regulated by dynamic protein modifications. Assessing protein functions, in vivo, and their functional switches remains still a great challenge in this age of development. An alternative methodology based on in silico procedures may facilitate assessing the multifunctionality of proteins and, in addition, allow predicting functions of those proteins that exhibit their functionality through transitory modifications. Extensive research is ongoing to predict the sequence of protein modification sites and analyze their dynamic nature. This study reports the analysis performed on phosphorylation, Phospho.ELM (version 3.0) and glycosylation, OGlycBase (version 6.0) data for mining association patterns utilizing a newly developed algorithm, MAPRes. This method, MAPRes (Mining Association Patterns among preferred amino acid residues in the vicinity of amino acids targeted for post‐translational modifications), is based on mining association among significantly preferred amino acids of neighboring sequence environment and modification sites themselves. Association patterns arrived at by association pattern/rule mining were in significant conformity with the results of different approaches. However, attempts to analyze substrate sequence environment of phosphorylation sites catalyzed for Tyr kinases and the sequence data for O‐GlcNAc modification were not successful, due to the limited data available. Using the MAPRes algorithm for developing an association among PTM site with its vicinal amino acids is a valid method with many potential uses: this is indeed the first method ever to apply the association pattern mining technique to protein post‐translational modification data. J. Cell. Biochem. 104: 1220–1231, 2008.

In Silico Modulation of Apoptotic Bcl-2 Proteins by Mistletoe Lectin-1: Functional Consequences of Protein Modifications

The mistletoe lectin‐1 (ML‐1) modulates tumor cell apoptosis by triggering signaling cascades through the complex interplay of phosphorylation and O‐linked N‐acetylglucosamine (O‐GlcNAc) modification in pro‐ and anti‐apoptotic proteins. In particular, ML‐1 is predicted to induce dephosphorylation of Bcl‐2‐family proteins and their alternative O‐GlcNAc modification at specific, conserved Ser/Thr residues. The sites for phosphorylation and glycosylation were predicted and analyzed using Netphos 2.0 and YinOYang 1.2. The involvement of modified Ser/Thr, and among them the potential Yin Yang sites that may undergo both types of posttranslational modification, is proposed to mediate apoptosis modulation by ML‐1. J. Cell. Biochem. 103: 479–491, 2008.

MAPRes: Mining association patterns among preferred amino acid residues in the vicinity of amino acids targeted for post-translational modifications

Post‐translational modification (PTM) of a protein is an important event in regulating cellular functions. An algorithm, MAPRes, has been developed for mining associations among PTM sites and the preferred amino acids in their vicinity. The algorithm has been implemented to O‐glycosylation and O‐phosphorylation data (phosphorylated/glycosylated Ser/Thr/Tyr). The association patterns mined by MAPRes demonstrate significant correlations and the results are in conformity with the existing methods. These association rules/patterns will be helpful in predicting the sequences/motifs involved for specific PTMs in proteins.

Phosphoproteome sequence analysis and significance: Mining association patterns around phosphorylation sites utilizing MAPRes

Phosphorylation, one of the most common protein post‐translational modifications (PTMs) on hydroxyl groups of S/T/Y is catalyzed by kinases and involves the presence or absence of certain amino acid residues in the vicinity of the phosphorylation sites. Using MAPRes, we have analyzed the substrate proteins of Phospho.ELM 7.0 and found that there are both general and specific requirements for the presence or absence of particular amino acids in the vicinity of phosphorylated S/T/Y for both of the phosphorylation data, whether or not kinase information was taken into account. Patterns extracted by MAPRes for kinase‐specific data have been utilized to find the consensus sequence motifs for various kinases required to catalyze the process of phosphorylation on S/T/Y. These consensus sequences for different kinase groups, families, and individual members are consistent with those described earlier with some novel consensus reported for the first time. A comparison study for the patterns mined by MAPRes with the results of existing prediction methods was performed by searching for these patterns in the vicinity of phosphorylation sites predicted by different available method. This comparison resulted in 87–98% conformity with the results of the predictions by available methods. Additionally, the patterns mined by MAPRes for substrate sites included 61 kinases, the highest number analyzed so far. J. Cell. Biochem. 108: 64–74, 2009.

Exploring the Sequence Context of Phosphorylatable Amino Acids: The Contribution of the Upgraded MAPRes Tool

Several models that predict where post‐translational modifications are likely to occur and formulate the corresponding association rules are available to analyze the functional potential of a protein sequence, but an algorithm incorporating the functional groups of the involved amino acids in the sequence analyses process is not yet available. In its previous version, MAPRes was utilized to investigate the influence of the surrounding amino acids of post‐ translationally and co‐translationally modifiable sites. The MAPRes has been upgraded to take into account the different biophysical and biochemical properties of the amino acids that have the potential to influence different post‐ translational modifications (PTMs). In the present study, the upgraded version of MAPRes was implemented on phosphorylated Ser/Thr/Tyr data by considering the polarity and charge of the surrounding amino acids. The patterns mined by MAPRes incorporating structural information on polarity and charge of amino acids suggest distinct structure‐function relationships for phosphorylated serines in a multifunctional protein such as the insulin‐receptor substrate‐1 (IRS‐1) protein. The new version of MAPRes is freely available at http://www.imsb.edu.pk/Database.htm. J. Cell. Biochem. 116: 370–379, 2015.