Molecular evolutionary and structural analysis of human UCHL1 gene demonstrates the relevant role of intragenic epistasi
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Molecular evolutionary and structural analysis of human UCHL1 gene demonstrates the relevant role of intragenic epistasis in Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders Muhammad Saqib Nawaz1, Razia Asghar1, Nashaiman Pervaiz1, Shahid Ali1, Irfan Hussain1, Peiqi Xing2,3, Yiming Bao2,3* and Amir Ali Abbasi1*
Abstract Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. PD associated human UCHL1 (Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1) gene belongs to the family of deubiquitinases and is known to be highly expressed in neurons (1–2% in soluble form). Several functions of UCHL1 have been proposed including ubiquitin hydrolyze activity, ubiquitin ligase activity and stabilization of the mono-ubiquitin. Mutations in human UCHL1 gene have been associated with PD and other neurodegenerative disorders. The present study aims to decipher the sequence evolutionary pattern and structural dynamics of UCHL1. Furthermore, structural and interactional analysis of UCHL1 was performed to help elucidate the pathogenesis of PD. Results: The phylogenetic tree topology suggests that the UCHL1 gene had originated in early gnathostome evolutionary history. Evolutionary rate analysis of orthologous sequences reveals strong purifying selection on UCHL1. Comparative structural analysis of UCHL1 pinpoints an important protein segment spanning amino acid residues 32 to 39 within secretion site with crucial implications in evolution and PD pathogenesis through a well known phenomenon called intragenic epistasis. Identified critical protein segment appears to play an indispensable role in protein stability, proper protein conformation as well as harboring critical interaction sites. Conclusions: Conclusively, the critical protein segment of UCHL1 identified in the present study not only demonstrates the relevant role of intraprotein conformational epistasis in the pathophysiology of PD but also offers a novel therapeutic target for the disease. Keywords: UCHL1, Epistasis, Neurodegenerative diseases, Parkinson’s disease, SNCA
* Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] 2 National Genomics Data Center & CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China 1 National Center for Bioinformatics, Program of Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included
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