In silico Studies of Parasporin Proteins: Structural and Functional Insights and Proposed Cancer Cell Killing Mechanism for Parasporin 5 and 6

Background: Cancer is the leading cause of death in the world and the new types of cancer are diagnosed regularly but the advancement in their treatment is relatively slow and not to mention very costly. Parasporins (PS), parasporal inclusion proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis, possess specific cytotoxicity against different cancer cells which has suggested them to be potential for cancer treatment due to their specific binding to cancer cells. Methods: Computational investigation were performed to exploit their physicochemical characteristics, structural properties including three dimensional (3D) model, model quality analysis, phylogenetic assessment and functional analysis along with the cancer-cell killing mechanism of PS-5 and PS-6 proteins using standard tools of bioinformatics.