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Title

Comparative analysis of organophosphate degrading enzymes from diverse species

 

Authors

Amna Salman1, Atefeh Taherian Fard1, Arshan Nasir1, Habib Bokhari1**

 

Affiliation

1Department of Biosciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Park Road, Chak Shahzad, Islamabad, Pakistan

 

E-mail*

habib@comsats.edu.pk; * Corresponding author

 

Phone

 

+92-300-512-7684

 

Fax

 

0092-051-4442805

 

Article Type

 

Hypothesis

 

Date

 

received  January2, 2010; revised April13, 2010; accepted  June8, 2010; published online July 6, 2010

 

Abstract

 

Different types of organophosphorous compounds constitute most potent pesticides. These chemicals attack the nervous system of living organisms causing death. Different organisms produce enzymes to degrade these chemicals. These enzymes are present in simple microorganisms from archaea, bacteria to complex eukaryotes like humans. A comparison of representative eight shortlisted enzymes involved in the degradation and inactivation of organophosphates from a wide range of organisms was performed to infer the basis of their common functionality. There is little sequence homology in these enzymes which results in divergent tertiary structures. The only feature that these enzymes seem to share is their amino acid composition. However, structural analysis has shown no significant similarities among this functionally similar group of organophosphate degrading enzymes.

 

Keywords

 

Pesticide, Organophosphates, Organophosphatases, Common functionality, Sequence and Structure comparison.

 

Citation

 

Salman et al. Bioinformation 5(2): 67-72 (2010)

 

Edited by

 

P. Kangueane

 

ISSN

 

0973-2063

 

Publisher

 

Biomedical Informatics

 

License

  This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.