Question

You have managed to isolate and partially sequence a protein that you think is involved in making cancer cells immortal:

PPTIQRLSRELLTGVDFLHSHRIIHRDLKPQNLLVSSQGHLKIADFGLAKTGSEMKLTS

You want to know if the this protein is novel or has already been characterized. If it is novel, you want to find out whether it is similar to anything that has already been characterized. How would you find out the answers to these questions in less than a minute for less than a dollar? Is it related to anything known, and if so, do you think it is involved in cancer mortality?

Answer 1

We can take the given protein sequence and BLAST it with the known database like NCBI. When the BLAST process is completed we will get to know whether this protein is novel or not. Upon completion of BLAST, we will the result which will show us all the known protein with which our protein is showing sequence similarity. If the protein is novel then we will not get any match in the BLAST result.

The given peptide sequence is matching to the Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 4 (CDK4) of Drosophila. Cyclin D binds to CDK4 and leads to progression of Cell cycle from The main function of CDK4 is move cells entry into S-phase. If due to mutation CDK4 is leading cell's entry into S-phase then this will leads to uncontrolled cell division and finally cancer