Why the study?
Since the 1999 protein TR census, curated proteins increased over seven-fold, but the significance and biological reasons for the association between TRs and intrinsic disorder remained unknown.
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Population
Curated proteins across all kingdoms of life
Design
Bioinformatic census and prediction study
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Protein tandem repeats are widespread across kingdoms; extends prior censuses but leaves open disorder-disease links pending validation.
Protein tandem repeats (TRs) are often associated with immunity-related functions and diseases. Since that last census of protein TRs in 1999, the number of curated proteins increased more than seven-fold and new TR prediction methods were published. TRs appear to be enriched with intrinsic disorder and vice versa. The significance and the biological reasons for this association are unknown. Here, we characterize protein TRs across all kingdoms of life and their overlap with intrinsic disorder in unprecedented detail. Using state-of-the-art prediction methods, we estimate that 50.9% of proteins contain at least one TR, often located at the sequence flanks. Positive linear correlation between the proportion of TRs and the protein length was observed universally, with Eukaryotes in general having more TRs, but when the difference in length is taken into account the difference is quite small. TRs were enriched with disorder-promoting amino acids and were inside intrinsically disordered regions. Many such TRs were homorepeats. Our results support that TRs mostly originate by duplication and are involved in essential functions such as transcription processes, structural organization, electron transport and iron-binding. In viruses, TRs are found in proteins essential for virulence.
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Delucchi et al. (2020) studied this question.
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