Evidence for a vast peptide overlap between West Nile virus and human proteomes

Abstract

The primary amino acid sequence of West Nile virus (WNV) polyprotein, GenBank accession number M12294, was analyzed by computional biology. WNV is a mosquito-borne neurotropic flavivirus that has emerged globally as a significant cause of viral encephalitis in humans. Using pentapeptides as scanning units and the perfect peptide match program from PIR International Protein Sequence Database, we compared the WNV polyprotein and the human proteome. WNV polyprotein showed significant sequence similarities to a number of human proteins. Several of these proteins are involved in embryogenesis, neurite outgrowth, cortical neuron branching, formation of mature synapses, semaphorin interactions, and voltage dependent L-type calcium channel subunits. The biocomputional study suggest that common amino acid segments might represent a potential platform for further studies on the neurological pathophysiology of WNV infections.

West Nile virus diagnosis and vaccination: using unique viral peptide sequences to evoke specific immune responses

“…(46) At the pentapeptide level, the total viral versus human overlap summed up to more than 20,000 pentapeptide matches. Following these results, we were especially interested in searching for and examining the peptide regions unique to the virus.…”

Characterizing the West Nile Virus's polyprotein from nucleotide sequence to protein structure – Computational tools

“…WNV protease (NS2B-NS3) activity is inhibited by 8-hydroxyquinoline 12 and the trypsin inhibitor aprotinin. 13 Only the protease complex and E proteins have been used to design antiviral drugs by peptides and ligands.…”

A systematic bioinformatics approach for large-scale identification and characterization of host-pathogen shared sequences

“…Shared sequences have been implicated in various cellular processes, which includes signalling, transduction, and protein stability [ 20 – 22 ]. These processes have been described to play a key role in pathogenicity of the host.…”

“…These processes have been described to play a key role in pathogenicity of the host. Earlier studies of shared sequences or molecular mimicry have been based on similarity search for sequences of k-mer lengths of mostly penta-, hexa-, hepta-, or octapeptide (5-, 6-, 7- or 8-mer), and generally applied on a limited number of sequences of the pathogen of choice, such as Human gammaherpesvirus 4 ( Epstein-Barr virus ) [ 23 ], Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) [ 24 ], Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) [ 18 , 21 ], Poliovirus [ 25 ], West Nile virus (WNV) [ 22 ], Measles virus [ 26 ], Influenza A virus [ 16 ], Streptococcus species [ 27 ], Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Salmonella typhimurium, Klebsiella pneumonia , and Proteus mirabilis [ 28 ], among others. The availability of large data in the public repositories means much remains to be elucidated on shared sequences, which can further broaden our understanding of host-pathogen interactions [ 29 , 30 ].…”