In silico discovery of novel protein domains in streptococcus mutans

Abstract

Streptococcus mutans is the principal etiological agent of dental caries worldwide and is considered to be the most cariogenic of all of the oral streptococci. We sought to expand our understanding of this organism at the molecular level through identification and function prediction of novel protein domains by two automated approaches using HMM and BLAST to develop a complete set of domains, which were then subsequently manually analysed. A final set of 19 novel domains and families was identified. This enhances our understanding of both S mutans and also general bacterial molecular mechanisms, including protein synthesis to catalytic action. Furthermore we demonstrate that using this type of in silico method it is possible to fairly rapid generation of new biological information from previously uncorrelated data to increase the rate of discoveries in the laboratory. © 2010 Varsale AR, et al.