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Abstract

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a micro vascular disorder affecting the retina of the eye. Many genes have been identified for its pathogenesis. Endoglin (ENG) is one of the candidate gene involved in DR. Several literature studies helped us understand that the in vitro and in vivo studies of these candidate genes had demonstrated the role of a new gene called endoglin (ENG) capable of inhibiting angiogenesis. In this present study we characterized the physicochemical and functional properties of endoglin gene using bioinformatics tools as this had not been studied previously. The three dimensional structure of endoglin was also computed using homology modelling and the reliability of the model was assessed by predicting its secondary structure along with validation. Additionally, using experimental evidence score, phylogenetic analysis and protein-protein network was framed between endoglin and its interacting neighbouring partners. These results are innovative and relevant enough to start prospective studies that will allow us to establish the relative strength of the prediction of diabetic retinopathy according to the endoglin levels presented by the patient. INTRODUCTION: Diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of blindness in the developing countries is a prototypical micro-vascular disorder associated with micro-aneurysms, intraretinal hemorrhages, capillary non-perfusion, intraretinal micro-vascular abnormalities and neovascularization. Global population based data indicate that it is the fifth most common cause of blindness in the world 1. The duration of diabetes and glycemic control is the two most important factors in the development of retinopathy 2 .