The Bos indicus Vechur breed cow milk is known for its medicinal value and the breed is listed under the category of critically maintained breeds by the Food and
Agriculture Organization. The lactoferrin protein in milk is known for its nutritional value. Gene polymorphisms have been reported for Bovine lactoferrin.
Mutations in the evolutionarily conserved sites tend to impair protein function and are related with the physicochemical difference between the known variants
with 11 SNPs within the wild type. Structural differences are located due to these SNPs that may lead to functional variations. The structural variation is seen
primarily in the first 48 residues at 5' end in all the samples modelled. Out of 11 SNPs 5 amino acid variations fall under alpha helix and beta sheet region, this
might be of functional significance. This result may provide evidence that the SNPs detected in lactoferrin gene might have potential effects on milk composition.
Our result demonstrates one major domain that could be a common binding pocket to all the samples, and important as an active site common to all the breeds that
could be utilized for effective drug designing. Moreover, at some SNP positions in Vechur breed, antimicrobial peptides were located indicating importance of
those residues for enhanced antimicrobial activity in lactoferrin of Vechur breed. Second binding pocket found in N- lobe region with the three required residues
aspartic acid, histidine and tyrosine for iron binding, was considered as major binding site.
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